Editor:
Since bad driving is maiming or killing so many as well as hiking our insurance rates, could Crime Beat include tallies of fines issued for running red lights, ignoring stops, failing to stop before turning right on a red, improper turns, sloppy lane changes, speeding, tailgating?
Publishing these figures would tell us in graphic counts whether our police force is taking traffic safety seriously. I'd like to think it is, but I see too many people committing all of these traffic infractions and more with impunity.
There's an old saying that cities and police forces prove true over and over again, "Nothing will be done until after somebody is killed."
After several deaths and many injuries, adjustments were made to traffic and pedestrian control signals in Delta, but given that Tsawwassen alone has seen two accidents involving pedestrians since those adjustments were made it has to be concluded that more assiduous enforcement of traffic safety laws is in order.
Last week, I came upon the aftermath – blood and other body fluids – of a man who’d been struck on 56th. The police refer to this tragedy as a "collision" and it was a "collision" but it was one between a tandem dump truck made of tons of steel and a human of blood, bones, tissue and a heart. Nobody mourns a dump truck or a car when it’s hauled off to the scrap yard, but family and friends do mourn a victim, be he killed, or be he crippled for life.
And lest we forget, our doctors are saving more and more victims from traffic death rolls, which is good but tragic because too many of them are crippled for life.
Greg J. Edwards
