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How 'bad' decisions ruin lives...

I wish I had a cute dog or cat story in me this week.
opinion_maxedout1

I wish I had a cute dog or cat story in me this week. I'd like nothing more than to distract myself — and maybe you — by reeling off another episode in the further adventures of travelling with Vince the Cat or a non-video version of S*#t Dogs Say... to drive an already hackneyed cliché into the ground.

It would take my mind off the rest of the dreary news and self-serving shenanigans I guess could generally be lumped under the title, S*#t Politicians and Captains of Industry Say.

News is like a scab I can't leave alone. I have to keep picking. I have to take a look, no matter how much it's going to hurt or postpone my hoped-for, eventual recovery. As wonderful as my personal world may be, the stuff out there, well, sucks.

The only bright spot in the news this week came on Sunday when, after deliberating for 15 hours, a jury in Kingston, Ontario, delivered guilty verdicts against the three surviving Shafia family members whose twisted concepts of culture and religion convinced them it was more honourable to kill their children and relative rather than let them become more or less normal Canadians. The warm feelings this blow against intolerance and medieval thinking engendered were tempered by the uncomfortable knowledge Canada and much of the rest of the world is riddled with people who see nothing wrong with killing women who bring shame against a family name for, let's be honest, being human.

But this sliver of humanity was, at least locally, overshadowed by the burned out hulk of a limo smoldering on the side of the highway just south of Function Junction. Having presumably dropped off tired fun-seekers looking forward to their Whistler holiday, Shafiqur Rahman was heading back home to Vancouver late Saturday night. Fortunately there were no passengers settled in for the ride with him. Unfortunately, in what must have, for seconds, seemed like a surreal film reeling out before his unbelieving eyes, a pickup crossed the centre line and ploughed into his limo with enough force to blow the damn thing up. If the force of the collision didn't kill him instantly, the inferno would have.

In an instant, a family was devastated, thrown into a world from which none of them will emerge unscarred.

No one yet knows what was going through the mind of the 19-year-old driving the late model pickup, except that he wasn't doing the one and only thing we're all responsible for doing when we get behind the wheel — paying attention. He might have been under the influence of drugs. Hell, he might have been updating his FaceBook page: "Just left a wicked party, dude." He might have fallen asleep and been unlucky. We might never know. Or maybe he'll man up and take responsibility for his deadly actions and we will. Whatever; he won't come out of this without some scars either. At least I like to think he won't.

It's the random, wanton nature of this tragedy — I can't bring myself to call it an accident because nothing about it seems accidental, more accurately negligent at best — that leaves me feeling numb. It's the embodiment of one of my worst fears and I suspect, if you dwell on it too long, one of yours.

Unless you're still 19, either chronologically or mentally, and feeling immortal, you understand at some level or another that it's a crapshoot whenever you get into your car and head up or down the Sea to Sky highway. It has nothing to do with the specific stretch of road between here and Vancouver other than the fact it's the one we drive most often and, like every other highway, it's full of impatient people who seem unable to distinguish between life and a video game.

Driving up from YVR two weeks ago, I enjoyed the single most harrowing trip up the StoS I've experienced in almost 20 years of driving it. Rain, freezing rain, sleet, blowing snow, whiteout and high winds coalesced into a white-knuckle experience that left me longing for the worst snowstorm conditions I'd every previously driven through. The only saving grace was the fact that from BOB to home, not a single driver was stupid enough to try and pass the snaking line of cars poking along at 60km/hr. Might have been the drifts on either side of the beaten-down path we were following, might have been karma. Either way, I couldn't believe my, our, luck.

But I can't shake the image. I've often wondered, driving along, noticing myself meandering mentally, what I'd do, whether I'd react correctly, if I suddenly realized the lights coming at me were actually on the wrong side of the — generally invisible — white line. The only time we have the grace to really think about something like that is when it's just a hypothetical thought puzzle. There's no time to think when it's really happening. Only time to react and probably only one chance to react correctly, assuming there is a margin of correctness at all.

It doesn't stop me from heading down the road. But it scares the hell out of me when someone I love is and I'm not with them. I don't want to get that call.

Sadly, there is no solution. It seems to be human nature to become distracted and we're an ever more distracted species. Car manufacturers seem complicit in our distraction, larding their new models with Internet connectivity, bigger screens that do more things with more of our gadgets so we can further split our attention between the crucial task at hand and other, less important things.

Having spent my first couple of driving years straddling a motorcycle, I've often thought it would be a good idea to force everyone to ride one before they're ever allowed to drive a car. It's hard to ride a motorcycle, not pay attention, and live. Car drivers tend not to see you so you both have to see them and make them see you, or at least drive as though they don't. You have to keep your eyes on the road because things that aren't important in a car — loose gravel, detritus that's fallen out of trucks, broken pavement — can put you down if you don't avoid it. You need two hands and two feet to ride a bike; the engagement with the machine doesn't leave much time for texting or fiddling with music.

But it won't happen. We'll still license drivers who don't have a clue that driving involves more than pressing pedals and turning a wheel. We'll still be distracted, stoned, drunk and stupid. Some us will still be killed. Meh.