Tales From a “GREEN” Minivan

This morning I awoke to my usual CBC Radio One Information Morning show.  I hit the snooze button as I do every morning to steal that extra 9 minutes of sleep and as I woke the second time, the story jolted me from a dead sleep almost hauntingly. As I was listening it brought tears to my eyes.  An off duty RCMP officer and his 5 year old daughter and almost 3 year old son died in a collision with a bus on NB’s Highway 7 between Fredericton and Saint John. Later one of the bus passengers was interviewed and revealed the location of the crash and this is what hit me the hardest, it was the exact same stretch of road I had an accident on almost 20 years ago.

I don’t talk about the accident a lot, and have never really written about it until now.  It tore me up inside for a long time, as I was the driver and also the only one not physically injured. I say physically, as emotionally I was a mess for a long time.  I credit my mom, with being so supportive and urging me to get behind the wheel right away and not turning her back on me.  The accident left her in limbo for many years financially while lawsuits were pending.

So it all happened on Thanksgiving Weekend 1989.  My friends, J1, D and I  decided to drive up to Fredericton to watch our boyfriends play football.  We had a great time at the game, stopped and had dinner and decided to follow one of our teachers (and coach of the team) back to SJ.  We also picked up another passenger J2, who decided at the last minute to drive with us. We all hopped in our 88 Toyota Corolla and headed back.  In 1988 shoulder seatbelts in the rear seats were just starting to emerge.  The middle seat only had a lapbelt.  I vaguely remember J2 asking where her seatbelt was and telling her it was there in the middle.

It was a fairly uneventful drive back, we listened to some music, joked about the weekend and at one point J1 decided to sit in the back with the other two.  This left me alone in the front seat.  It soon became dark and I was watching the road extra close for deer and moose.  This highway is dangerous plain and simple.  It’s a two lane highway and the only highway that connects NB’s two major cities Saint John and the capital, Fredericton. In recent years there has been a push to have deer and moose fencing installed, but the road itself is dark, and very twisty. Back in 1989 there was a few passing lane stretches (3 lanes) that you could take advantage of (there’s many more now), this is where things started to turn for the worse for us.

The Coach took advantage of one of these passing lanes to overtake a car that was driving very slow.  The driver of this car was in the passing lane so Coach had to pass him on the right hand lane. All signage posted says “Keep right except to pass” when I was quickly approaching him I tried to also pass him on the right hand side but the third lane was ending soon so I had to let off.  Most of these 3 lane passing stretches are in uphill areas of the highway.  We continued driving for a few more minutes closely following this car.  I remember it clearly it was a Hyundai Stellar, and it had seen better days.  The trunk latch was loose and bouncing a little as he drove.

I soon was given another opportunity to pass, this time though it was a dotted line on my side.  The road was clear and I down shifted to 4th gear to overtake this car.  There was a slight downgrade to the road, but I was unable to pass him.  It was almost like he was speeding up.  I was about three quarters past him when my dotted passing lane ended and turned into a double solid line.  The next thing I knew there was head lights coming at me in the lane I was in.  My first reaction was that it was a Transport Truck and I swerved quickly into the right lane and when I did my passenger side wheel hit the dirt shoulder and lost control flipping end to end and estimated seven times landing on it’s wheels.

My first reaction was to reach to the back seat to see how everyone was doing and I was horrified when the backseat was completely empty. The three girls in the back were all thrown from the vehicle as no one was wearing any seatbelts.  I was and did not move and inch, it locked the way it was supposed to and kept me seated right in the drivers seat.  Some studies were done after the crash and the results were inconclusive. It was difficult to determine if injuries would have been diminished or worse.  One thing that did come out is that if the middle lapbelt was worn it could have had a worse result that it did.

I won’t get into all of the details of their injuries, but they were all severe and have had lasting impacts on their lives to this day.  There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of them all and have made it my personal mission to be as safe as I can while driving and this includes Child Passenger Safety (Car Seats included) and why I have tried to educate myself and others on keeping our kids safe as passengers.

I don’t know all the specifics of how these two little ones were restrained in their Toyota Corolla (yes the same make as I was driving), but I’m sure that it will hopefully make us all think twice when we buckle our kids in each day.

My heart goes out to this grieving mother and wife, I can only imagine what you are going through right now. See the CBC article on Constable Porter.

Now to the Government of NB it’s time to twin Highway 7.  How many more lives need to be lost? We deserve a 4 lane link between Fredericton and Saint John. Moose and deer fencing is not enough.  It’s time to bring our province into this millennium!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Car Seat Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.