It was inevitable, after a mild September and October that winter really blew in this month. Now that Remembrance Day has passed, and the season of city parking bans has returned, Christmas lights are slowly, incrementally livening up St. Paul’s nightscape, and those familiar Christmas carols are slowly starting to trickle into the soundtrack of my Saturday grocery shopping expeditions.
As much as I’m not looking forward to Christmas shopping, I am looking forward to going home for the holidays. In anticipation of the heavy air traffic between east and west this winter, I bought my tickets in the middle of the summer, planning to save. Given what some of my friends are paying to fly back to the east coast this year, I would say my plan was a success.
But in all the excitement of the countdown until the holidays, it can be easy to lose track of the dangers that come with the dropping barometer. As it does with every healthy amount of snowfall, the rate of traffic accidents in Alberta, this past weekend alone, jumped up dramatically.
A huge amount of the province, as everyone knows, was hit with a lot of snow winds, and cold temperatures that froze a lot of the snow that had melted earlier in the week.
With this intense weather, and hazardous conditions there are evidently some awful consequences for people who don’t want to adjust their driving habits, and slow down a little.
In Edmonton, on Saturday alone, RCMP in the city had to respond to a total of 118 accidents between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. 18 of those were hit and runs. Obviously some people were ashamed of their indiscretions behind the wheel.
Highway 2 was literally shut down on Saturday by two crashes involving over 30 cars. Highway 881 also saw accidents with a treacherous combination of wind, slipperiness, and it’s own precarious narrow breadth.
Not everyone is totally responsible for what happens when they drive in the horrible weather we had this past Saturday, but allow me to be frank for a moment. People here drive fast - really fast.
I make an effort to stick to the speed limit, and am being passed on a regular basis along main street and on the highways. And I don’t mean occasionally. I’m hard pressed to find days I’m not left in a cloud of dust by people clearly in much more of a hurry than I am to get where they’re going.
On arterial roads like Highway 16, I feel like a hunted animal as people aggressively rocket past me going well past 120 km/h and probably 130 km/h on a road whose generous speed limit is all of 110 km/h.
That kind of wanton speeding is dangerous enough when the roads are clear and visibility is “A1” on the long sunny days that I’ve learned characterize this province’s beautiful summers.
That same kind of reckless lead-footedness when you can barely see 20 feet from your front bumper is bad for everyone. As the air gets colder, the snow cover gets thicker, and roads get slipperier, please do yourselves and everyone around you a favour and slow down.
I get it. We’re all busy and in a hurry, but it’s better to be a little late than to be a statistic.
