Tuesday, April 10, 2018

The Tragedy of the Humboldt Bronco






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