A vent long in the making

Here is a photo I took last week, and a column I wrote for the paper last week, that have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

The photo is of swans that had just taken off from a Banford Road farm in east Chilliwack, here seen with Mt. Cheam in the background. The column was one I had half-written about a dozen times in my time in Chilliwack and declares this city as home to the world's worst drivers. Driving here truly is putting your life in your hands with morons in pickup trucks and tailgating idiots.

Our roads home to the worst

Paul J. Henderson, The Chilliwack Times

Published: Friday, February 06, 2009

I've been conducting a highly unscientific experiment over my nearly three years in Chilliwack and while I'm loathe to engage in hyperbole, I have come to the conclusion that Chilliwack drivers might just be the world's worst.

For starters, to indict everyone who operates a motor vehicle in Chilliwack in one fell swoop in this way is admittedly not just unfair, it is a false use of logic. The same human use of logic—specifically inductive logic—that allows us to recognize everyday objects and expect the sun to rise each morning also leads human beings towards making gross generalizations and such things as racism.

Point being: I know all Chilliwack drivers aren't bad, but there does seem to be a proportionately larger number of crappy commuters in this community than others.

My experiment began, unknowingly, when I began driving a little over 20 years ago in Oakville, Ont. From there most of my driving was in the Greater Toronto Area and east to Montreal and west to London where I went to university.

But over the years since then I have visited London (England), Amsterdam and Zurich. I've been a passenger in a BMW travelling more than 200 km/h on the German autobahn. I've been in a car on the Champs-Élysées merging through about 16 lanes on a traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe.

I've ridden in taxis on the winding ridges and small alleys of the Greek islands of Santorini and Crete. I've ridden questionable buses in the hills of Guatemala and wandered the streets as vehicles zipped by in Nicaragua and Honduras.

I've also worked as a bike courier riding eight hours a day in the streets of downtown Vancouver. And I've lived, worked, ridden my bike and driven a car all over Toronto.

But in all that experience in vehicles on roadways never have I seen such consistently moronic driving manoeuvres than I have in Chilliwack.

I can't understand why there aren't more accidents unless the reason is luck. Or maybe the drivers in Chilliwack are not only not bad, but that maybe there is some secret NASCAR training facility here and so while so many drivers are irritatingly aggressive and ignore the rules of the road, maybe they are skilled at avoiding accidents.

I suppose the one positive thing about the bad drivers in Chilliwack, from my observations, is that it truly is an egalitarian phenomenon. There are those who are sexist to the point of cliché and will see a woman do something dumb in a car and declare all women can't drive. Someone else will decry the skills of the elderly who putter around the roads and yet others will slam young people who drive like maniacs.

But every time I see a moronic driving move I look closely to see who is guilty and I have seen people of all ages, genders and colours. There are young women texting, smoking and applying make-up all while tailgating me all over town; over-stimulated, testosterone-filled young men in ridiculous pick-up trucks swerving in and out of lanes with the bravado of youth; stressed out mothers in oversized SUVs being clueless to the rules of the road; and angry, middle-aged men careening past fire trucks to get the kids to school on time.

When it comes to stupid behaviour, those who mess around with guns are, in my humble opinion, right up there as Darwin Award winners, but the reality is that guns, relatively speaking, kill very few people, where as the ubiquity of cars and trucks in all of our everyday lives, coupled with the horrendous driving of so many Chilliwackians, means we are all literally roaming the streets surrounded by ticking time bombs.

I always remember as a young man telling my mother I would drive safely, and thinking she was patronizing me by saying she wasn't worried about me, it was the other drivers.

But now I know what she was talking about.