A Thursday evening collision at the intersection of McKenzie Towne Gate and McKenzie Towne Link Southeast sent a Calgary Transit bus hurtling into the exterior of a neighbouring condo complex, The shaken but uninjured residents say the intersection has seen numerous crashes.
According to police, the driver of a truck failed to observe a stop sign and collided with the side of the bus. The force of the impact sent the bus into the condo building.
Bill and May Briscoe were watching television in their ground floor unit when the bus crashed into the exterior wall of their condo. The bus did not enter the unit but a window was shattered.
The Calgary Transit driver and one of the bus’s 25 passengers were transported to hospital with minor injuries. The structural integrity of the building remains intact.
The driver of the pickup truck has been fined for reckless driving. Drugs, alcohol and speed have been ruled out as contributing factors.
The Briscoes say the intersection is very busy and drivers frequently run the stop signs at a high rate of speed.
“It really is dangerous,” said Bill Briscoe. “There’s been several accidents there and we’ve lobbied for a four-way stop for five years with no results.”
Dorothy Kincaid, who serves on the building’s condo board, says something needs to change as people have been injured at the intersection. Kincaid says, within the last year, a boy on a skateboard was struck by a car and a woman was injured in a separate crash.
Ward 12 Councillor Shane Keating says the city has received 15 complaints regarding the intersection in the last five years and the city has no record of injuries or fatalities occurring at that site in that period.
Keating says the intersection has a lower collision rate than similar intersections with similar volume of traffic.
With files from CTV's Kathy Le
