On Friday, April 6, 2018, at around 5 PM, a bus, carrying
the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team, collided with a semi truck carrying a
load of peat moss near Tisdale, Saskatchewan, a town in the central east part
of the province. In the end, fifteen people died, with fourteen injured. It was
an accident that touched the heart of every Canadian, and every hockey fan in
the world. At this point, no one knows what truly happened, and no one has been
officially blamed. The driver of the truck was taken in to custody right after the accident, but then
released, so it’s not likely that he was drunk or on drugs, but again, no one
knows for sure. Once the cause of the accident is known, I will write an in
depth article about what the accident can teach us as far as driving. But while
we wait and grieve for the kids (around 15 years old, most of them) and the
adults who were taken in this tragic event, here are a few lessons we can all
take from this tragedy.
·
First, our time is limited on this planet. Love
the people in your life, tell them what you want to tell them, because you
never know when you will not get another chance to do that.
·
Travel over the open road is still inherently
dangerous. While nothing is known yet, and no blame can be honestly leveled anywhere,
it would do us all well to remember that the road, even though largely tamed
with anti-lock brakes, emergency steering, and emergency braking, can still
kill. We should not take the danger of driving for granted.
·
Intersections still remain the most dangerous
part of any road, anywhere. More accidents happen there than anywhere else, by a wide margin. Again, while nothing is known for sure, it can be seen from
the picture above, that this accident happened at an intersection. It is likely
that someone lost their brakes, or did not brake at all, and that caused the
carnage. Just like we shouldn’t take the danger of the road for granted, it
would do us all good to remember that intersections are very dangerous places,
and our guard has to be up twice as much at an intersection than it is on an
open road or freeway.
·
Not only do you need to be careful around
intersections and just in general, but you need to be careful in rural areas. I
used Google Street View to take SK35 up from Tisdale, all the way to SK335. (SK
35 and SK 335 are highways in Saskatchewan. In Saskatchewan, highways are
denoted with an SK before the number.) It was the intersection of 35 and 335
where the accident took place. That area is VERY rural. The Google Street View
was taken in 2013, so it’s possible much has changed, but just west of that
intersection is an unguarded railroad crossing (I don’t know if trains use that
track or not), and there are stop signs on SK335, with flashing red lights to
warn drivers that they need to stop. That’s it. Rural roads lull people to complacency because not
much happens on them. You can go for miles and miles, hour after hour, with
neither the road, the scenery, nor the situation changing much. Trust me, I
used to have to drive from Arizona to California, and there are large stretches
in the California desert which are like this. This lack of difference can be
dangerous, because it can make the driver think the threat is lessened. This is
possibly what caused the actor James Dean’s death, as he was also in a rural area in northern
California, driving fast, not worrying about anything, that was, until a
college student pulled out in front of him, killing him instantly when the two
cars collided. The lesson is to keep your attention and focus up just as much
in rural areas as you would in the city. These roads are just as dangerous-more
so, because people don’t worry about anything happening, because it rarely
does. But when it does, as in this bus tragedy, it can be horrible. I’m
not saying anyone involved in the accident lost focus, just that it’s easy to
do in a rural area.
·
Accidents, like life, are very capricious. From
what I understand, the truck driver walked away with nothing but some cuts and
bruises, while the first twenty feet of that bus are completely gone. Not just
wrecked, crushed, or destroyed, but they don’t exist anymore. Accidents are
like that. You will have situations where a rock goes through a windshield, and
goes through at the exact right time and place to hit someone and kill them. Or
you can have a situation like I saw at the GM Proving Grounds in Mesa, Arizona,
where a dump truck, fully loaded and doing a test that had the truck doing 80
miles per hour, blew a tire and ran completely off the road, tumbling over as it went. I saw the truck the next
day. The passenger side compartment of the truck was completely leveled. If you
know trucks, you know that the cab, where the driver sits, is above the hood.
This truck no longer had a passenger side that was above the hood. It was at
the same level as the hood, or below it. But if you looked at the driver’ side,
it just had a smashed windshield. There wasn’t even a dent on the top. That
driver walked away, too, and was actually back to work the next day, to the
shock and surprise of all of us drivers.
·
This tragedy has shown the greatness of people
all over the world. What one person started doing, and sent a text out to a
buddy explaining, is he left a hockey stick out on his front porch right
after the accident. He told his buddy that he left it out in case any of the
Humboldt players who died needed a stick. This caught on, and people all over
the world started doing it. You will see sticks now outside of people’s houses
anywhere people play hockey. This is just another example of how great and
heartfelt people are.
·
Another example of greatness is the generosity
shown after the accident. A GoFundMe page was set up to support the victim's
families and the survivors. They were hoping to raise two million dollars.
After a day, they raised a million and a half. According to the Go Fund Me
website. In four days, 90,000 people donated over 8 million dollars. The figure
they were hoping for was 4 million. This type of generosity was seen after 9/11, and for the hurricanes
that hit Texas and Florida in 2017.
Humboldt is just another example of how generous people are, and how
much they want to help.
·
And above all, be nice to each other. Life is
too short for grudges, jealousy, gripes and negativity. Be kind to all, and do
your best to make someone else’s day a little better, in whichever way you can.
Until next time…
No comments:
Post a Comment