Regarding Brian Jones’ recent column on speeding: I just drove from Vancouver to St. John’s. I’ll be going back soon. The wife won’t fly.
I concur with his observations about Newfoundland and Labrador. I saw one cop car pulling into Corner Brook on our cross-island drive.
Car companies need to stop glorifying speed in their commercials and be more responsible, like Volvo, and emphasize safety.
Plenty of speeders, though, many of them well exceeding 130 kilometres per hour. Sad to say it was not an uncommon site across the country — an absence of police and plenty of speeders.
I do believe, however, that we compound the problems of speeding when cops have to give chase at even higher speeds. Deadly accidents caused by police giving chase across the two borders are evidence of this. We need to get more creative and use technologies that stop them in their tracks, such as disabling lasers fired from helicopters. Drones remotely controlled can also be effective. Military vehicles have governors to prevent speeding.
Car companies need to stop glorifying speed in their commercials and be more responsible, like Volvo, and emphasize safety. The carnage on our highways is preventable, and you would think insurance companies should be in the lead at promoting prevention. Education for defensive driving offering significant reductions in insurance premiums can also help.
More people have died or been injured on the roads in the last hundred years than in all wars ever fought. A sobering thought.
Morris Saldov
Retired MUN professor and not-so-timid senior
The Battery, St. John’s
