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In the wake of 16 people being killed in the crash of the Humboldt Broncos team bus in rural Saskatchewan, local politicians are vowing sweeping safety updates to the intersection where it happened.

“This cannot happen again,” Dale Poggemiller, a rural councillor who lives near the crash site, said last week. The area’s deputy reeve, Ian Boxall, called for a review of rural highway intersections across the province.

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As Saskatchewan traffic planners weigh their options, it’s almost certain that they will be considering roundabouts, a technology embraced around the world as the go-to method of stopping the bleeding at deadly rural intersections.

“Rural roundabouts provide an effective resolution to an intersection with a poor crash history, and more importantly, an intersection with a history of severe crashes,” reads a 2014 study by the U.S.-based Transportation Research Board.

Photo by The Canadian Press/HO-GHD Engineering Consultants

The paper analyzed 17 American intersections that had collectively killed 11 people over a roughly five-year period. After being converted into roundabouts, however, researchers found that injury-causing crashes plummeted by 84 per cent and fatal crashes stopped entirely.

On April 6, a semi-truck carrying peat moss collided with a coach bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos, a team in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League. Sixteen were either killed instantly or died later in hospital.

The crash occurred at the junction of Highway 35 and Highway 335, an intersection roughly 20 minutes north of Tisdale, Sask. that is already well-established as a site of tragedy.