Distracted driving still a major concern on Saskatchewan's roads, say experts, advocate
Distracted driving remains a major concern on Saskatchewan roads, with experts and advocates warning that even a few seconds of inattention can have deadly consequences.
Driving instructors, police officers and other Saskatchewan residents spoke with host Sam Maciag on CBC Radio's Blue Sky Wednesday to share their experiences with distracted driving, and their thoughts on how to prevent it.
Ron Buddecke, a driving instructor, said distractions come in three forms.
Those are "a visual distraction, where you're actually taking your eyes off the road; a manual distraction, where you're taking your hands off the wheel; and then you can have a cognitive [distraction], where you're taking your mind off of what you're doing," Buddecke said.
Texting while driving is particularly dangerous, because it involves all three types of distraction, he said.
"Texting while driving makes the driver 23 times more likely to crash," he said. "Drivers talking on a cellphone, just talking, are four times more likely to have a car collision."
Distractions aren't just limited to phones, he added, and can include "MP3 players that are going, passengers and pets," as well as "eating and drinking — I've seen that lots. And adjusting your radio is a distraction."
He also noted that billboards, pedestrians and even GPS devices can take a driver's focus away from the road.
For Sandra LaRose, a road safety educator and speaker, the dangers of distracted driving are personal. Her daughter, Kailynn, was killed in a crash. LaRose now advocates for safer driving habits.
"I'm hyper-aware now … especially since I do a lot of highway driving," she said. "From the distance, cars coming towards me, I can tell when they're starting to veer into my lane or they're veering towards the ditch."
LaRose said she often sees distracted drivers in the city, including people on phones.
She urged people to think twice before making calls to drivers.
"If you know they're on the road, don't call," she said. "There's nothing worth losing your life over — absolutely nothing. Everything can wait."
Officer issued 1,500 cellphone tickets in 1 year
Regina Police Service Const. Mike Seel, known as "Hawkeye" on social media for his work in traffic enforcement, said distracted driving remains a serious problem, despite some improvements.
"There's that one year I personally wrote almost 1,500 cellphone tickets," he said. "In the last couple years, it's still around 500 or 600 that I've written a year, but that's a marked decrease, which is good to see."
Seal said a combination of factors — including newer cars with hands-free technology, harsher penalties and public awareness — have contributed to the decrease.
But distracted driving remains "literally just below impaired driving, and causing injuries and deaths for accidents in the province," he said, and he still catches distracted drivers on a regular basis.
"I had a lady I pulled over, and it was the fourth time in 12 months that she's been on her cellphone," he said.
LaRose says she hopes people understand that distracted driving is preventable.
"We have not lived with cellphones for eternity, and we all managed," she said. "We managed without Google Maps, we managed without phones, we managed without texting. Your life is far more precious than your time."
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CBC
03-05-2025
- CBC
How bayanihan is grounding Filipino Canadians in 'ethics of care' after Lapu-Lapu Day tragedy
Social Sharing "It was meant to be a day filled with music, dancing, food, laughter." Rev. Expedito Farinas choked up as he addressed mourners on Sunday at St. Mary the Virgin South Hill, an Anglican church with a largely Filipino congregation just a 15-minute walk away from where tragedy had occurred the night before. The Lapu-Lapu Day Block Party began as a day of "great celebration honouring our heritage, our culture, our tradition," Farinas told CBC Radio's On The Coast. Hundreds of people sang along to artists like Black Eyed Peas' Filipino vendors and food trucks lined the streets to serve the tens of thousands of people who visited throughout the day. WATCH | 'It turned out to be a traumatizing day': A celebration of culture ended in trauma, says Anglican pastor 5 hours ago Duration 0:49 But in moments, the scenes of joy turned to devastation as an SUV drove into the crowd Saturday evening, killing 11 and injuring dozens more. Chaos ensued. Eyewitness videos show bodies lying limp on the pavement, held by distraught community members waiting for paramedics to arrive. "There are so many," one man says in Tagalog amid the cries for help, before pointing the camera to the end of the street. "It goes all the way until there." The accused attacker, 30-year-old Kai-Ji Adam Lo, was arrested and charged with eight counts of second-degree murder, with more charges likely to come. Dubbed the "darkest day" in Vancouver's history by interim police chief Steve Rai, the Filipino community has been gathering to mourn with the nation at large. This past week, dozens of vigils, memorials and spaces to grieve have been organized, with at least 23 in the Vancouver area alone and 10 more across the country. That support shows how the Filipino community has been unified by a spirit of bayanihan. The term comes from the Tagalog word bayan, which refers to one's town as well as the Filipino motherland and people as a whole, and reflects communal unity and the practice of providing help without expecting reward that is inherent to Filipino culture. It signifies how the "community is grounded in ethics of care," says York University politics professor Ethel Tungohan, whose work focuses on Filipino migration and activism. "This is testament to the community's ability to care for each other and to recognize the importance of showing up and holding space for each other." A community 'lifeline' Bayanihan has been a "lifeline" for the grieving Filipino community, says Leny Rose Simbre, secretary of the board for Kababayan Multicultural Centre in Toronto. "In the past few days I've seen how the spirit has taken shape," said Simbre, who is also chair of Migrante Ontario, which co-organized an emergency vigil on Sunday night. For many, that has meant holding each other close as victims' families reel from the senseless violence, and comforting the survivors who witnessed the evening's horrors. Kris Pangilinan, a Filipino-Canadian journalist and founder of one of the festival vendors, Kalamansi Collective, remembers speaking with a mother just before the incident took place. "She came to my booth immediately after the concert," Pangilinan tearfully recounted at a Toronto vigil on Tuesday. "If I only talked to her for a bit longer, she wouldn't have been hit." That woman was 43-year-old Christi-Ann Watkins, who was struck while in line for a food truck. She sustained a range of injuries, including a punctured lung, and remains in hospital. As of Thursday afternoon, four of the surviving victims remained in critical condition and two in serious condition, according to the Vancouver Police Department. By Friday afternoon, donors had given more than $2.3 million across 20 GoFundMe campaigns to support victims and their families. Beyond financial support, Vancouver chef T.J. Conwi also created a food hub for families of the victims and anyone else in need of meals. Mourners have also gone beyond leaving flowers and lighting candles, with many opting to eat and sing together. In Toronto, one vigil ended with music, including a song called Bayan Ko, meaning "my homeland," which is often considered the unofficial second Filipino national anthem. Partaking in food and song together is an "act of care and collective resistance," said Simbre. Prime Minister Mark Carney used the term in his expression of condolences to the Filipino Canadian community, where he highlighted its "strength and resilience." "[ Bayanihan ] captures the Filipino spirit of community, of co-operation and unity to achieve a common goal," said Carney at a press conference the day after the attack. "It's this spirit upon which we must draw in this incredibly difficult time." 'When one falls, we all fall' While she appreciates the expressions of solidarity, Tungohan worries the Filipino community won't receive the support it needs from governments because of its perceived resilience. "Sometimes the term 'resilience' is used to appease people," she said. "Why are we jumping into resilience mode when we need time and space to grieve?" WATCH | Memorials let us 'witness each other's grief': Religious rituals can restore 'safety and comfort' after man-made disasters, says psychologist 5 hours ago Duration 1:13 Dr. Kenneth Miller, a clinical psychologist and counselling professor at the University of British Columbia, says community and religious interventions that reduce isolation can normalize feelings of grief and help restore a sense safety and comfort following a disaster. Tungohan further states the sense of loss is amplified by the fact that the attack happened in a space that should have been a site of "refuge, subversion, resistance and joy" for a diaspora that can feel isolated from the cultural practices of their motherland. Last Saturday's festival commemorated the anniversary of the Battle of Mactan, where in 1521 Indigenous Philippine chieftain Lapu-Lapu defeated explorer Ferdinand Magellan, setting back the advance of Spanish colonization. "That's why the attack was so horrendous for many of us, because it wasn't just an attack on a party," she said. "It was an attack against this moment of coming together and celebrating … in spite of all of the difficulties and challenges that the Filipino community as a whole has faced." Speaking at a vigil outside Toronto City Hall on Tuesday, spoken word artist Patrick de Belen expressed a similar sentiment. "Filipino resilience is ultimately a beautiful thing, but not if it prevents us from feeling heartbroken or weak, vulnerable, sad, angry," he said. In a poem titled the garden on fraser and 41st read by a community member at the same event, Vancouver-based teacher and poet Sol Diana likewise writes, "Bitter taste on my tongue when I call my own people 'resilient.' I prefer to call us by something else: kapwa; 'a shared self' ... when one falls, we all fall. Conversely, we rise together." Community makes grief 'more bearable': mental health experts Cordelia Mejin, a clinical counsellor and grief therapist, says the expression of "love through practical ways, not just through emotions" is shared across many Asian cultures. "When you have people coming alongside it almost feels like people are carrying that way together with you," said Mejin, who has offered free therapy to the Filipino community and survivors of the festival. "It doesn't erase the grief, but it actually makes it more bearable." Eliezer Moreno, a B.C.-based grief counsellor, says resilience is about honouring what happened and finding agency through it, not burying or forgetting about the grief. "We don't want to feel helpless. We want to feel like we have power and can choose, make choices, turn what we are feeling into something, knowing that we have strength and that we are going to be stronger together in this," said Moreno, who is Filipino. Moreno says when other counsellors asked him to add his name to a list of professionals helping those impacted, he agreed right away. "My mind just went to, 'This is my community. I need to help,'" he said, describing it as a way to channel his own difficult feelings into helping others. Clinical psychologist Dr. Kenneth Miller says a healthy recovery process means embracing, not ignoring, the grief. "Resilient doesn't mean that you don't have any pain; resilient means that you recover from your pain, that you bounce back and don't go on to develop long-term problems," said Miller, a counselling professor at the University of British Columbia. Moreover, social supports that "make people feel seen and supported and heard," Miller adds, can help prevent long-term impacts, such as acute stress disorders, which he says are typically developed by 20 to 30 per cent of survivors of a mass killing. "The initial period, the first few weeks following this kind of event — that's when community-level interventions become so, so, so important," said Miller. "They are actually more important for most people than any kind of mental health professional intervention or professional mental health care." WATCH | Community interventions integral: Why we gravitate to vigils in times of loss 5 hours ago Duration 0:54 That community care and support may be especially important for Filipinos, who are bound by a strong sense of shared culture that embraces both joy and anguish as a collective. "It's the nature of the Filipino community to love one another," said Mejin. "When you love, then there's the grief that comes when you've lost, as well." For his part, Moreno is hopeful that the Lapu-Lapu Day Festival and the Filipino community will endure in a way that will "celebrate our own culture and our resilience and our strength." "It will be a mark that's kind of left on that festival. But … they are going to use that mark that was left and continue to honour those that we've lost and to show the resilience that's part of the community."
CBC
01-05-2025
- CBC
Toronto festival organizer calls on city to fund safety upgrades after Lapu-Lapu Day tragedy
A Toronto festival organizer is calling on the city to help fund new local safety measures after a car ramming at the Lapu-Lapu Day Filipino block party in Vancouver killed 11 people last weekend. The city is set to meet with festival organizers — including Kristyn Gelfand, producer of Do West Fest in Toronto's Little Portugal neighbourhood — on Thursday to discuss enhancing event security. Gelfand said she'll be asking the city to fund hostile mitigation measures, such as concrete planters and barriers designed to resist vehicles, if those become mandatory. "We already have a finite amount of funds that we're working with for 2025," she said in an interview with CBC Radio's Metro Morning on Thursday. "It would definitely be an issue if we were told by the city today that we need to have those without having additional support from the city to provide it." Gelfand said the city evaluates festivals individually and has not previously required hostile vehicle mitigation at Do West Fest. But if that changes, the additional cost could range between $40,000 to $80,000, she said. Without city support, she said the festival may need to seek emergency funding from the Little Portugal BIA, which presents the festival. Crowd barrier fencing not effective, organizer says In an email to CBC Toronto, city spokesperson Imane Boussa said Thursday's meeting will "gather insights on potential risks and discuss available city supports." It is not open to the media. Discussions will inform a Festival Safety Summit on May 26 "where the city, partners and organizers will further explore safety measures and potential enhancements," she said. Do West Fest has used crowd barrier fencing in past years, but Gelfand said that measure isn't effective against vehicles. In 2023, an intoxicated driver broke through the fencing before the event started, injuring a pedestrian and hitting a hydro pole. "We've seen that they actually do nothing to stop a car," she said. Do West Fest involves 200 brick and mortar businesses, as well as 200 additional small artisan and food vendors, Gelfand said. She estimated the festival generates millions of dollars in economic impact. "The city needs to step in and act as a true partner for these festivals and understand that Toronto is a thriving and vibrant and economically diverse city because of events like this." Do West Fest is happening from June 6 and June 8 along Dundas Street W., from Ossington Avenue to Lansdowne Avenue.
CBC
17-04-2025
- CBC
In response to safety concerns, St. John's mayor wants police to patrol downtown on foot
Some members of St. John's city council are calling for police foot patrols in the downtown area in response to safety concerns from residents and businesses. St. John's Mayor Danny Breen says residents have identified public safety as a top issue in several recent surveys conducted by the city, including a recent feedback forum on the annual Water Street pedestrian mall. "If people are not feeling safe in that area, I think that that needs to be addressed," he said in an interview with CBC Radio's The St. John's Morning Show. "And one of the best ways to address this is to have a higher profile of policing in the area." Beginning in 2020, the city of St. John's has closed parts of Water Street to vehicle traffic for the summer months, turning the area into a pedestrian-only space. Last fall, the city initiated a public feedback process to look at the future of the downtown pedestrian mall. Staff presented an overview of that feedback at this week's committee of the whole meeting, including submissions from both businesses and members of the public. According to the report, safety and crime were top concerns for both residents and businesses. Those concerns aren't new. Over the past two years, business owners and musicians have spoken out about robberies and assaults in the downtown area. Earlier this year, two men were arrested after a brazen robbery at a Water Street business. Two years ago, the city and the provincial government provided $180,000 to a group called the Downtown Safety Coalition, which included both levels of government as well as Downtown St. John's, the George Street Association, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and others. Last year, coalition spokesperson Don-E Coady told CBC News the money was being used to fund private security in the downtown area, including on George Street. More security coming Over the past few summers, the city has paid for private security in the Water Street area during the running of the mall. This coming summer, according to Breen, the city plans to hire even more security for the area. But Breen says he would still rather see the RNC conduct foot patrols. "I don't think private security down there is as powerful as having a police presence there," he said. Breen says he's pleased to see more money in this year's provincial budget for policing, including the addition of 10 more frontline RNC officers located in the northeast Avalon Peninsula. Jill Bruce, councillor for Ward 1 and lead for community services, agreed with the mayor's call for foot patrols in the downtown area. "It would help with not only the actual issue of safety, but the perceived issue of safety," she said. In previous years, some residents and community groups have pushed back against calls for additional policing in the downtown area, instead asking for that money to be spent on other initiatives, like poverty reduction. According to Statistics Canada, the overall crime rate in the St. John's area — which includes the communities surrounding the capital city — increased by 7.5 per cent from 2022 to 2023. The severity of police-reported violent crime also steadily increased between 2014 to 2023. However, those statistics, which cover an area where almost 224,000 people live, are not specific to the city's downtown area. CBC News has asked the RNC for more specific statistics on police-reported crime in downtown St. John's.
