We Need To Stop Driving Like Other People’s Lives Don’t Matter

Over the past few months, I have spent countless hours travelling Alberta’s highways while delivering newspapers to our outlying communities. Before taking on this route, I often wondered how so many serious collisions happened on roads that seemed straightforward enough to drive. My thinking was simple: stay on your side of the road, obey the rules, pay attention, and everyone gets home.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

After thousands of kilometres behind the wheel, I have witnessed more dangerous driving in the past few months than I ever thought possible. It has completely changed how I feel about driving. I was never someone who worried about highway travel. Now, every trip feels like I have to be on constant alert—not because I’m afraid of the road itself, but because I’m afraid of the decisions other drivers are making.

The common denominator in what I have witnessed isn’t bad weather. It isn’t poor road conditions. It isn’t vehicle failure or a driver suffering a medical emergency.

It’s impatience.

It’s distraction.

It’s the growing belief that the rules somehow apply to everyone else.

I have watched drivers attempt to pass when oncoming traffic was already far too close. I have seen people try to pass two, three, even four vehicles at once without enough highway to do it safely. I’ve watched drivers begin passing before the designated passing zone starts or refuse to pull back in when it ends because they are determined to finish what they started, regardless of the danger they create.

Every one of those decisions turns every innocent driver coming the other way into an unwilling participant in someone else’s gamble.

Then there is distracted driving.

I cannot count the number of people I have seen looking down at their phones instead of watching the highway. I have watched vehicles drift across the centre line and weave back again because the driver was focused on a screen instead of the road ahead.

One driver actually passed me while holding a cellphone directly in front of their face. I honestly don’t know what they thought they could see around it, but I know what I saw—a two-ton vehicle travelling at highway speed with a driver whose attention was somewhere other than the road.

That isn’t confidence.

It’s recklessness.

Some people dismiss these behaviours by saying, “Nothing happened.”

They’re right.

Nothing happened...

This time.

But highway tragedies don’t begin with twisted metal and flashing lights. They begin with one bad decision. One text message. One impatient pass. One moment of believing you’ll “make it.”

Two days ago, my husband and I were driving to the city for medical appointments. We were passing a semi-trailer that was travelling below the speed limit on a divided highway. As we approached the intersection at Viking, an unmarked police vehicle suddenly crossed directly in front of us from the intersection. The semi completely blocked our view, so neither of us saw the vehicle until it was already in front of us.

My heart stopped.

I turned to my husband and said, “There you have it. It really is just that easy.”

Just that quickly, our lives could have changed forever.

What made the incident even more unsettling was that it involved a law enforcement vehicle. The people entrusted with enforcing our traffic laws should be leading by example whenever possible. Unless there is a genuine emergency requiring immediate action, the same rules that exist to protect the public should apply equally to everyone. Respect for traffic laws begins with demonstrating them.

This isn’t about pointing fingers at one profession or one group of drivers. The dangerous behaviour I have witnessed comes from people of every age, every type of vehicle, and every walk of life. The common thread isn’t who they are—it’s the choice they make when they get behind the wheel.

When you choose to drive distracted, you aren’t just risking your own life.

When you make a reckless pass, you aren’t just taking a chance for yourself.

You are making that decision for everyone else on the highway.

For the young family coming home from a camping trip.

For the grandparents driving to visit their grandchildren.

For the truck driver simply trying to earn a living.

For the teenager driving home from work.

For the mother with her children asleep in the back seat.

For the single person who simply wants to get home after a long day.

Every one of those people has someone waiting for them.

Someone expecting them to walk through the front door.

In the last three months alone, I have experienced at least three close calls that could easily have become head-on collisions—not because of anything I did wrong, but because someone else decided the rules didn’t apply to them. They were texting, they were speeding excessively, and they were impatient.

How many more near misses never make the news?

How many people get home and say, “That was close,” never realizing how narrowly they escaped becoming tomorrow’s headline?

We often call fatal collisions “accidents,” but many of them aren’t unavoidable accidents at all. They are the predictable result of preventable choices.

Slow down.

Wait for a safe passing opportunity.

Put your phone away.

Accept arriving one minute later instead of risking someone never arriving at all.

Because the truth is painfully simple.

Every person you meet on the highway has a family.

Every one of them has people who love them.

Every one of them deserves to make it home.

The next time you’re tempted to answer a text, squeeze in one more pass, or convince yourself that you have “just enough time,” remember this:

You are not the only person whose life depends on your next decision.

And neither is your family.