Sunday August 29, 2004
As dangerous as habitual criminals.
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I try not to write about the same subject too frequently, for fear of sounding like a voice mail menu endlessly repeating platitudes. But events sometimes conspire against me.
Three weeks ago I called automobiles the most lethal weapons most of us will ever own. Granted, your average Lincoln Navigator doesn\’t have the firepower of, say, an F-18 Hornet or MI Abrams Battle Tank.
But a car traveling at 50 km/hr (30 mph in the U.S.), has about the same momentum as if it were dropped from a height of 50 feet. No one would risk walking under a car suspended overhead. But most drivers persist in driving as if all that hurtling inertia can be controlled instantly.
Pedestrians, incidentally, often suffer from the same delusion. They step off the curb with a blatant disregard for the laws of kinetic energy, as if cars could stop as fast as walkers can.
Physics doesn\’t work that way. The heavier the object and the faster it is traveling, the harder it is to change direction or stop. Imagine a dog-walker with a Chihuahua or German Shepherd on the end of a leash. A charging Shepherd can dislocate its owner\’s shoulder; a charging Chihuahua will barely – no, I\’ll quit while I\’m ahead.
Crash!
\”Times New Roman\”> Faye Joanna DeWetter clearly was not thinking about the laws of physics on Thursday August 19. According to police reports, she roared at over 100 mph, 160 km/hr, across northern BC. Three police cars chased her, and gave up for safety reasons. Finally, Dewetter\’s stolen Dodge Ram pickup ran a red light at Highway 16 and the Icefields Parkway on the outskirts of Jasper, AB, smashed into a Chevrolet Suburban with eight tourists in it, and killed Show-Kow “Rita” Chum, a 50-year-old tourist from Toronto.
At 160 km/hr, the force of impact is roughly comparable to DeWetter driving her truck off the top of a 15-storey building, a drop of about 150 feet.
The police charged DeWetter with 14 offences, including criminal negligence causing death.
Street racers in particular ignore the lethal potential of their wheeled projectiles.
Here in Kelowna – just one week after my column on cars as lethal weapons – Mary Louise Ferguson was a passenger in a car taking her mother home from Sunday dinner. As her car turned left, a Honda Civic and a Ford Mustang came racing around a bend.
Mary Lou Ferguson, 67, was killed in the crash.
Apathy about carnage
\”Times New Roman\”> As I write this column, neither of the 20-year-old racers had been charged with anything, although RCMP media liaison say charges are pending.
Nor have the drivers\’ names been made public.
Why not? I can\’t help thinking North American society has accepted some deaths as an inevitable by-product of driving. If we really decided to do something about those unnecessary deaths, we would also have to do something about the privilege of driving.
Typically, we treat driving as an inalienable right – like voting, free speech, owning property, and eating greasy hamburgers.
If those two drivers had killed Mary Lou Ferguson using any other weapon, they would be immediately arrested and arraigned. If they had shot her, beaten her with a club, drugged her, stabbed her, or dismembered her with a power saw, the public would have been outraged.
After the brutal slaughter of Bill Abramenko earlier this month, Vernon residents held protest demonstrations demanding closure of the halfway house where convicted murderer Eric Fish had been living on parole.
But no one has organized protests outside the houses where the street racers lived.
Again, why not? I consider street racers just as dangerous, and unpredictable, as habitual criminals.
And believe me, street racers are habitual offenders. They spend thousands of dollars preparing their cars for a possible challenge. That makes their behavior premeditated, to my mind. The only unknown is the identity of their victim.
Likely to repeat
\”Times New Roman\”> After former federal member of parliament Svend Robinson received a conditional sentence for stealing a $65,000 ring, many letter writers and editorial columnists argued he got off too easily. As a prominent social activist, they claimed, he should have been made a public example of.
But consider. Robinson harmed no one physically. Nor did he damage anyone\’s property. He returned the ring. He confessed to the crime. And he is hardly likely to repeat the offence – not with the Canadian media watching him!
Reckless drivers, on the other hand, are almost certain to repeat. Because they desire not a material object but an intangible thrill, that delicious rush of adrenaline that other people seek in roller-coasters, whitewater rafting, or Olympic sports – but, I have to add, without the physical discipline demanded of Olympic athletes.
I can speak personally here. As a youth, I got that thrill pushing some underpowered English sedans to their limits. I\’ve since realized that today\’s cars have capabilities that far surpass mine. I now try to push limits in less hazardous ways.
Meaningless mantras
\”Times New Roman\”> The recent accidents in Jasper and Kelowna – and no doubt in many other places – share two factors. Speed and youth.
Some will automatically parrot the mantra, “Speed kills!”
I guess none of these people ever take airline flights. Because if they do, they travel about five times faster than any of them has gone in a car. And they survived to tell about it. So clearly, speed itself does not kill.
Others will reassure themselves, “Boys will be boys.” (The fact that DeWetter is female rarely upsets those who rely on truisms.) And they\’ll probably add, “They\’ll grow out of it.”
Wrong again.
Once upon a time, Darwin\’s laws of natural selection removed the foolish and the foolhardy from the gene pool. Starvation eliminated the foolish; sabre-toothed tigers got the foolhardy.
Today, tragically, these evolutionary misfits are likely to take others with them. Like Mary Lou Ferguson, and Rita Shum.
In a civilized society, it\’s not good enough any more.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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