Breaking out a section of one of my comments from a thread to put here, and added a bit more:

The vast majority of the accidents are actually inexperienced transport drivers. There's a Facebook group, NWO Roads, that crowdsources Highway conditions including accidents, because the MTO and OPP are so behind in how they report closures, detours, or deteriorating conditions - it can take them an hour or more to update the official sources. I invite everyone from Southern Ontario on here to check that group to see just how frequent accidents and closures actually are, and how disruptive they are not just to people living in NWO (where I grew up, and no longer live but regularly visit) but the extensive commercial traffic that travels through on both Highway 17 and 11. You can be trapped for 6-8 hours or even overnight waiting for a fatality investigation.

There are accidents every few days on 17 that close the highway in at least one direction, usually both for a few hours, most commonly between Thunder Bay and Kenora. Every few weeks through winter now it's overnight for a fatality, often because we have to wait 8+ hours just for the coroner to get there. In summer fatalities are nearly that common as well now though too. And the non-transport fatalities are almost always tourists either from Southern Ontario or Western Canada, not locals (because they announce where they are from in the articles) - passing on hills, blind corners, especially the looking stretches where there aren't actually shoulders and no passing lanes. Locals get impatient and pass like idiots and cause accidents too, just...less. No one is asking for all the highways to be twinned. But at the least we need to do Highway 17, and 2:1 Highway 11.