Editor:
Re: On the road to recovery, Aug. 2.
My sympathies go out to Peggy White, who suffered devastating injuries and could easily have been killed when struck by a hit and run dump truck on 16 Avenue.
I hope that driver is found and charged.
If he is driving a vehicle that size and doesn’t know the clearance, he shouldn’t be driving.
If he is too incompetent to not know when it is safe to pass a pedestrian or cyclist, he should not be driving.
If he doesn’t check his mirrors to see the carnage he has left behind, he should not be driving.
If he is unaware he struck someone or – worse – knows and intentionally left her there, he should not be driving.
The fact is, White could be any cyclist or pedestrian, since so many drivers seem too impatient to slow down or apply brakes and wait until it is safe to pass.
I also wonder how well Surrey tries to make cycling safer. While there are some great places to cycle in Surrey, there are also dangerous areas where cycling lanes suddenly disappear and cyclists are forced into traffic on narrow shoulders – 16 Avenue is one of those. East of 184 Street, there are shoulders wide enough to safely cycle. West of 184th, where White was struck, those cycling lanes disappear.
Surrey recently spent who knows how much money repaving 168 Street between 32 Avenue and Highway 10 and did not widen a narrow road shared by trucks, cars, farm vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists.
For the sake of as little as 15 centimetres of asphalt along each side, they could have made the road safer for all. They chose to pack the shoulders with gravel instead.
I wish White a complete recovery and the courts to treat hit-and-run crimeswith the seriousness it deserves.
Peter Battistoni, Surrey
• • •
I am very alarmed at the amount of hit-and-runs I have been reading about in our local papers.
Accidents do happen. Sometimes people are preoccupied, or they are on the cellphones, or their vision may just be impaired. The worst-case scenario is that they have had a few drinks, and in some cases they may be in denial – it just didn’t happen.
Sooner or later, though, if you are a moral person, ‘remorse’ is going to get you.
I am not a religious person, but my Roman Catholic upbringing taught me remorse will not let you sleep and will haunt you forever if you don’t own up. There are ‘immoral’ people who don’t have a soul, and they are the ones who can commit crimes without remorse. Fortunately, there are not too many of those around.
So, if you are involved in a hit-and-run, do the right thing. Don’t wait until a police officer comes to your door. If you do, I hope the law will prosecute to the fullest extent, thereby making it a deterrent for others.
D. Barros, White Rock