Two people were killed in two separate collisions over the Thanksgiving long weekend in BC.

RCMP Traffic Services Spokesperson Cpl. Mike Halskov says a 21-year-old Okanagan man was killed in a head-on collision on Highway 1, west of Salmon Arm, early on Friday morning.

“Upon arrival, it was determined that a westbound pickup truck had crossed the centre line and collided head on with an eastbound semi-truck,” Halskov told NL. “Road and weather conditions in that crash were reported to be good at the time, and impairment has not been ruled out as a contributing cause.”

The other incident, he says, was on Highway 3 at the Kootenay Pass that happened early on Sunday morning.

“It was an unwitnessed collision. A motorist came across a vehicle that had gone down an embankment on the Kootenay Pass,” Halskov said. “A single vehicle, single occupant crash. The young man who was driving, his family has been contacted. There are very few details on that collision at this time.”

Both crashes are under investigation at this time, Halskov noted, pointing that on average there are about 2,200 crashes with 700 injuries and four fatalities over the Thanksgiving long weekend.

“It is a little lower than the usual average that ICBC reports for this weekend, so we can be thankful that although one [fatality] is too many, we only had the two fatalities over the weekend,” said Halskov.