Editor: The premise of the 91原创 Township survey concerning the 16 Avenue development is deeply flawed. It is not an important east-west transport link; we are making it one. Past decisions have also made it one. It is a heavily populated, residential road. Further encouragement of it becoming a main transport route is unsafe for residents, and for those passing through.
This morning the lights outside our window are red and sparkling. They shine and twinkle and make my children think of Christmas.
"What's going on mummy?" They want to know.
I cringe. I heard the sirens and saw the cars start to line up. Again.
How do you tell your child about these kinds of things? These kinds of things that could easily be prevented. The kind of things that end with memorials being set-up on our front lawn each year. That end with families grieving over the loss of fathers, or sisters, or brothers, or mothers.
"It's nothing," I lie.
It is the worst kind of something.
I have swept the remnants of glass shards caused by these somethings from my front drive. I have explained to the police officer that I live here; that I can't "go around" the accident.
This accident, where someone died, or that accident where cattle suffocated in an overturned truck, or this one today, where the smell of burning oil, and burning fuel, and burning god-knows-what sticks in my nose and make me feel helpless and human and sad.
I think about the municipality's proposed speed increase on our road. I think about the proposed widening of the road. I think about progress and everyone who deserves to get home to their family in a timely way; without crazy traffic jams. I think about how traffic has increased and the fact that people are already going above the speed limit. I think about what I can do, what anyone can do. The progress feels inevitable. The people with needs are real. Increasing speeds and widening roads feels like the only answer but it feels wrong. It makes me want to scream.
British Columbia, is already raising its speed limits. Transport minister, Todd Stone, insists it will keep me safer. It's hard to understand the logic as I watch people drive by my home, my neighbours' homes, going almost 80 kilometers an hour when the posted speed limit is just 50. How will an increase keep anyone safer?
I understand that the policy shift is part of a global trend. European countries have been raising their speed limits for years. So are many of the states in the US. Utah, in particular, reported a decrease in traffic accidents in 2009 after they increased their speed limit from 75 mph to 80. Their transport minister said it provided better consistency among drivers.
Everyone was going consistently faster and no one vehicle was going grossly over the speed limit.
While there may have been fewer accidents, the number of fatal accidents rose. Speed increases stopping distances, and exponentially increases the force in a collision. Kinetic energy doesn't care about statistics, or theories or policy shift, or the psychological games we play with each other.
In British Columbia the statistic bare it out. Between 2008 and 2012, 1,650 people lost their lives on our roads. In 35 per cent of those accidents speed was a factor. It's simple physics.
Stone, says they are just trying to legalize the speed limit that people are already going. You could certainly make a case for this on 16 Avenue. Particularly if we start encouraging more traffic to use this route.
What happened to enforcement, consequences 鈥� like fines and licence suspensions 鈥� and safe community planning?
Clear boundaries are meaningless without consequences. My kids could tell you this.
If people aren't going the speed limit then our consequences aren't working. Upping the speed limit to make people "legal" is like asking kids to eat as many cookies as they want, because they'll do it anyway. But we are not talking about cookies. We're talking about cars, cars being driven by loving fathers, caring mothers, and precious sons and daughters.
And in the heart of my little rural community, these cherished lives that are only passing through are dying. Right there at the end of my driveway.
Carolyn Schmidt,
91原创
