Last week I got so busy (possibly confused) heaping praise on that San Francisco plaintiff attorney who offered tire advice that I completely forgot about this bit of honesty from last year.
Seems a 30-year-old man from East Stroudsburg, Pa., pleaded guilty to careless driving in an accident that killed a 45-year-old woman from Bear Creek Township.
The man was, according to police, speeding on bald tires on Jan. 12, when he tried to pass another vehicle. His pickup spun wildly out of control and hit the woman’s truck.
First of all, despite the tragedy, it was an unusual change of pace that the tires weren’t somehow blamed.
At the same time, police and prosecutors did no one any favors when they let the case get watered down to a plea deal that dismissed citations of driving too fast for conditions, failure to drive within a single lane and driving with unsafe tires.
The defendant had to only pay a $500 fine and take three points on his driving record.
That’s about what he might have paid for some better tires.
Prosecutors claimed the man’s driving wasn’t “gross negligence,” the standard to bring homicide by vehicle charges, even though he was speeding on a snowy, wet day on clearly bald tires.
Even though his tires would not have passed state inspection.
Except they did.
Seems the man paid for an inspection of the vehicle two months prior to the accident, and the vehicle “passed” with flying colors. But prosecutors determined that the tires should not have been approved, and they charged the repair shop owner, who later pleaded guilty to three counts of completing a faulty inspection.
None of this, of course, will bring the woman back, or make her grieving husband and children feel any better.
But it does point out how a lack of care and a lack of integrity can create a dangerous – and sometimes tragic – situation.
* * * * * *
Speaking of road tragedies, some good news from up north.
According to Transport Canada, that country posted its lowest death toll from driving accidents in 60 years.
In 2008.
Seems the Canadians are no better than Americans at releasing timely statistics. “The Canadian Motor Vehicle Traffic Collision Statistics: 2008” saw the light of day in January 2011. The U.S. Department of Transportation is about on the same snail’s pace.
Still, despite the aged nature of the data, Canada enjoyed a 2008 with 12% fewer on-road deaths than the year prior.
“The dramatic decline also positions Canada to achieve its goal of reducing fatalities by 30% from the baseline period of 1996 to 2001, to the average from 1998 to 2010, said Transport Canada.
For 2008, there were 2,419 road fatalities, down from 2,761 the previous year. About 54% of those who died were motor vehicle drivers, 20% were passengers and 12% were pedestrians.
Somewhere in that report, perhaps, was a list of causal factors, like vehicle condition or tire failures. But that information may take a few more years to compile.
