HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2010-04-15, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2010. PAGE 5.
Here’s a news flash for you: cars aren’t
safe. Imagine. Hurtling down a stretch
of pavement at a mile a minute or
more in a container of tin, glass and rubber
towards other hurtling containers of tin, glass
and rubber may actually be hazardous to your
health. How could we have guessed?
The headlines all currently finger Toyota as
the auto tycoon wearing the black Stetson, but
that’s unfair. All cars are ‘unsafe’. Always
have been. If it’s ‘safe’ you’re after, you need
to curl up in a pillow fort on your chesterfield
wearing a hockey helmet and watching reruns
of Oprah, and praying your house doesn’t take
a meteor strike.
If it’s any consolation, cars these days –
Toyota included – are a helluva lot safer than
they used to be. The cars I grew up with had no
seat belts, air bags or childproof door locks –
some models actually had rear doors that
opened backwards.
People are vexed because the Toyota’s floor
mats ride up? My old man carried a ball peen
hammer under the driver’s seat of his ’52
Pontiac. Sometimes the gearshift would jam
between second and third. A good hammer
smack on the steering column usually took
care of it.
Worse – those early cars featured running
boards that ran along the bottom of the doors
between the wheel wells. That’s right – auto
manufacturers provided ledges to
accommodate the feet of passengers wishing
to travel outside the car.
Ralph Nader changed all that with his book
Unsafe at Any Speed, published in 1965. The
book contended that General Motors’ Corvair,
a sporty little number touted as a family car,
was actually the equivalent of a rolling hand
grenade.
Nader and his book might have been
relegated to historical asterisks had not GM
responded like a paranoid bull moose in a
china shop. The corporation hired crooks to
tap Nader’s telephone and paid hookers to try
and entice him into compromising situations.
Their actions unwittingly bought Nader
several million dollars worth of free publicity.
But it got the Corvair off the road and led to
a plethora of government regulations aimed at
making automobile travelling safer for
everyone.
Ironically, all those rules and regulations
may have had the opposite effect. Skeptics
argue that by making cars safer, authorities
merely encouraged drivers to be less careful
and more aggressive on the road. Ultimately,
they argue, this resulted in more accidents.
They may have a point. Thirty-four Toyota
drivers in the U.S. are known to have died
when their vehicles accelerated out of control.
But in the same time period, 21,000 others
died in accidents involving Toyotas that had
nothing to do with automotive flaws.
The problem, as the old saying goes, was not
with the nuts and bolts of the car; just with the
nut behind the wheel.
Here at home, Toyota Canada has received,
as I write, exactly two complaints about
vehicles with sticky gas pedals involved in
accidents.
In response they are recalling some 270,000
vehicles across the country.
Overreaction? Perhaps a tad. And we’ve
been here before. Back in the late ’70s the
Ford Pinto achieved brief notoriety for its
dangerous gas tank. It became known
derisively as “the barbecue that seats four”.
Ford recalled more than 1.5 million Pintos and
Bobcats in the U.S.
Total number of Pinto drivers or passengers
known to have died as a result of faulty gas
tanks: 27.
Pity other domestic commodities aren’t so
strictly regulated. Handguns kill 30,000
Americans every year. No recall in the works
at Smith & Wesson, Colt, et al.
Cigarettes? They nail 400,000 smokers in
the States every year, but there’s no talk of
yanking Marlboros or Camels off the market
anytime soon.
Here in Canada there are more than 19
million ‘light vehicles’ (cars, mostly) on our
roads somewhere between Haida Gwai and
Cape Race. Each vehicle contains some 3,000
parts. The vehicles are capable of moving at
speeds in excess of 150 km an hour. They are
in the hands of exceedingly fallible creatures
who may be ill, drunk, over medicated, talking
on their cell phone, suicidal, having a heart
attack or just plain clumsy.
Accidents will happen.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Accidents are sure to happen
While Phil Mickelson’s win at The
Masters over the weekend was an
achievement in golf like few others, I
couldn’t help but appreciate the emotional
victory that he and his family achieved in
Augusta, Georgia.
The misfortune that has plagued the
Mickelson family in recent months has been
well-documented. In the summer of 2009, Phil’s
wife Amy and his mother Mary were both
diagnosed with breast cancer within 50 days of
one another, prompting Phil to take a break
from golf.
Upon returning, he said he was playing with a
heavy heart while his two favourite girls
(possibly excluding his daughters) underwent
treatment, but he soldiered on, because playing
golf, is, after all, his job.
Mickelson has always been a true man of the
people. Phil will spend hours signing
autographs after playing a round and he
acknowledges nearly everyone who shouts to
him with a tip of the hat or a thumbs up.
So it was no surprise that when word of the
Mickelson family’s struggles made their way to
the media, fans grabbed onto Phil with an even
tighter embrace than ever.
Because who hasn’t been touched by cancer?
And who hasn’t wanted to stop their life in its
tracks in order to cope with something? But we
have jobs, school and responsibilities that often
make that an impossibility.
Going into the tournament, Phil didn’t speak
about joining golf greats like Sam Snead, Nick
Faldo and Gary Player with his third green
jacket, he spoke about the excitement he felt
that Amy could be there with him at a
tournament for the first time this year.
And while I have to admit, I was caught up in
all the hype and a tiny part of me wanted to see
Tiger make a run on Sunday, a part of me
wanted to see him win or even finish in the top
10 (which he did, winning a bet for me).
Through the weekend, I took offense to golf
commentators referring to the situation that
Tiger Woods has been put through. Another golf
commentator, however, spoke correctly, saying
that Woods put himself through his situation.
Watching Mickelson walk the same fairways
as Tiger, and having experienced real pain over
the past few months that many of us can relate
to, I couldn’t agree more.
I have sometimes expressed a distaste for the
sign often seen outside of churches and the
Catholic schools of my youth, urging people to
“keep calm and carry on”. While I may be many
things, calm doesn’t tend to be one of them.
Several years ago Tiger lost his father,
resulting in an emotional win soon after, the
difficulty of which cannot be understated and a
loss many can relate to, but whatever hot water
Tiger is currently in, rest assured he jumped in.
However, after Phil went through the
formalities, shaking hands with his competitors
and hugging his caddy, he then made his way to
the gallery. And as his parents and children
looked on, he embraced his wife as tears
streamed down both of their faces.
At that moment we were all reminded about
true struggle and the happiness that can come
with the perseverance, hard work and patience
that it takes to come out on the other side of
tragedy and adversity.
Both Amy and Mary are doing well and Phil
has won one for the family. As we all struggle
through life’s problems, we can only hope to
have such a teary embrace along the way.
Through hard work and sacrifice come
promotions and recognition and through
personal struggle, closer relationships are
woven with those you love and stood by you,
we just have to keep calm and carry on.
Mental problems not easily solved
One for the family
The saddest stories heard by Ontario
MPPs in many years have been told to
a group of them who toured the
province looking at mental health issues. And
the saddest part of all is there is no assurance
they will be remedied soon.
The MPPs’ committee listened to highly
personal accounts volunteered by many
suffering from mental illnesses and their
families, who spoke bravely because much of
the public wrongly attaches a stigma to being
mentally ill as well as from professionals and
organizations helping them.
In an interim report it has praised those who
testified for their courage and recommended
improved services that mostly cost money,
which the province will not find easily, when
it has its biggest-ever deficit caused by an
economic recession.
Kevin Daniel Flynn, a Liberal backbencher
who chaired the committee, said, however, the
victims are committed to recovering and the
province must commit itself to helping them
recover.
Christina Jabalee and her sister, Jennifer
Takacs, told in Toronto of their brother
Michael, who committed suicide at the age of
25.
Christina, a social worker, said Michael
began suffering from depression at the age of
15, sleeping 16 hours a day, refusing to eat,
crying and unable to function, and eventually
dropping out of school.
At the age of 17 he was admitted to hospital
after he threatened to jump off a four-storey
parking garage and diagnosed as having
bipolar disorder, but not provided with any
psychiatric follow-up.
His mental state continued to worsen and he
was treated repeatedly for brief periods
without any continuing plan to keep him well.
Jennifer, a family doctor, said Michael’s
behaviour led him to run-ins with the
justice system and jail, where he remained
untreated and deteriorated. She took her two
young daughters to visit him there to show he
was still loved.
When Michael was released, he was
paranoid, delusional and hearing voices and
within weeks had killed himself.
The sisters, although better prepared to help
him than most, said they tried hard, but feel the
health system could have done much more to
help him than it did.
Simone Usselman-Tod, an x-ray
technologist and massage therapist, told of the
younger of her two daughters, who in her early
teens became withdrawn and prone to angry
outbursts, which increased in severity.
She became more and more irritable,
intolerant of everything and everyone, refused
to attend school and told her friends she was
thinking of cutting her wrists.
Four counsellors advised the family and
their most common theme was it was too
lenient and should be firmer with her, but she
went on to cut her wrists, arms and body with
blades and her family was told “there was
nothing we could do that would make her
stop”.
Her family found a private agency, Recovery
Counselling Services in Toronto, which treats
patients.
It suggested her daughter, as a high-risk
case, attend successively two residential
centres in the United States, where she spent a
total of 20 months being treated and
medicated.
The daughter, now 18, is back home and an
outpatient at the Toronto agency, has learned
many techniques to help her cope day-to-day
and has not relapsed. She is doing well
and says “thank you, Mom, for saving my
life”.
The mother said she was so impressed with
the system in the U.S. she has asked the
Ontario government to help fund programs
there so Ontarians can use them.
A witness who preferred to use the name Ms
X said she is a Bay Street lawyer, working
long hours, loving every minute of it and
happily married with a five-year-old son.
Two years ago she awakened in the intensive
care unit of a psychiatric ward, where she was
diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Ms X said “we need to make the public
understand mental illness takes many forms
and can attack anyone at any time through no
fault of their own” and the MPPs will have
taken a useful first step if they can make this
message known.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Shawn
Loughlin
SShhaawwnn’’ss SSeennssee
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Final Thought