Editor, The News:
Last Saturday, while on the way to work at 8 a.m., my wife was involved in a serious vehicle accident in downtown Maple Ridge.
A woman with a young child in the back ran through a red light and hit my wife’s car just behind the driver’s door.
The severity of the hit was so intense it spun my wife’s car around three times and she ended up in a parking lot across the intersection.
Her car missed being wrapped around a light pole so closely that there were paint chips from her car on the light pole.
She fortunately was able to walk away and, while the child in the offending car seemed unhurt, walking around, the woman was taken away in an ambulance and will hopefully be OK.
An RCMP officer at the scene stated that my wife should buy a lottery ticket as a 1/1,000 of a second difference could have been devastating.
What makes this whole scenario so frightening is that, according to witnesses at the scene, the offending woman driver was on a cell phone, and even though there was another car in the lane next to hers stopped at the red light, she went through it without even an attempt to slow down.
This comes after another relative of mine, while stopped at a red light in Maple Ridge awhile ago with her children, was rear ended by a person apparently on a cell phone who stated they didn’t see her vehicle stopped at the light.
I wish I could understand, but never will why people are unable to drive from point A to B without having to be on a phone.
What is so important to them that they would rather risk their own lives, their children’s, and everyone else around them?
It is apparent that the law and fines don’t deter them as you see people blatantly using their phones while driving all the time.
We have the technology and I sincerely hope that if a person can be shown to be using their phone while being involved in an accident , their insurance will be voided and the authorities will come after them to recover all the costs of the accidents they cause.
Doug Stanger
Maple Ridge
