Editorial

When will they ever learn?

We were saddened this week to receive word of the tragic death of the wife of one of our compatriots – the publisher of the Whitecourt Star.
We were saddened, then enraged, to read that Dorothy Stephanson died when the vehicle she was riding in was struck on Hwy. 16 near the Alberta/British Columbia border — by an allegedly drunk driver.
A release from the RCMP in Jasper says police charged a 63-year-old driver from Houston, B.C., with impaired driving causing death, impaired driving causing bodily harm (the publisher was also seriously injured in the crash) and failing to comply with the blood demand made by a peace officer. William Kearney will appear in Jasper Provincial Court May 13 to answer to the charges.
Details offered by the RCMP showed that the vehicle that Kearney was driving had allegedly been wandering from one side of the highway to the other. One vehicle in front of Stephanson took evasive action and avoided collisions with Kearney’s vehicle. When Stephanson tried to do the same, his vehicle crashed into the wandering pickup, killing Dorothy and sending her husband to the University of Alberta hospital.
Like many weekly newspapers in this province, the Star annually features a promotion to reduce drunk driving. That usually happens in early December in an effort to encourage Albertans to use a designated driver, or a cab, to get home after the annual Christmas party.
In recent months we’ve heard many people berating the police, the RCMP and municipal forces, for their initiative to zero in on speeders, impaired drivers and those who ignore stop signs. They say the police are looking for easy ‘cash cows’.
But we encourage those people to take special note the next time they hear or read about a car crash. (We refuse to cause them ‘accidents’ because most could have been prevented.)
Eight or nine times out of 10, the incidents happened, people were killed or seriously injured, because someone was impaired, speeding, blew a stop sign – or any combination of the three.
How many times and in how many ways does this message have to be rammed down people’s proverbial throats? And how many more deaths will it take before the ‘idiots’ learn they’re not the expert drivers they believe themselves to be when they’re drunk?
We applaud every initiative that police take to keep impaired drivers off the road. For the sake of our family and friends, for Albertans everywhere.

No ordinary Svend
If he was some unknown with no record, chances are Svend Robinson would never see the inside of a courtroom over his ‘slip’, er, jewellery theft.
For one thing, he turned himself in before anyone had even the slightest inkling that they could find that expensive piece in the MP’s pocket, somewhere in the deep recesses of a dark closet.
Secondly, he’s not the type of person that one would think is going to turn a different leaf and take up with the criminal world. He probably hasn’t even had a speeding ticket before.
For many, that first brush with the law is the last, charges are dropped and any hint of the ‘event’ disappears from every radar screen. End of story.
But because he’s Svend Robinson, the MP that never backs down from his beliefs, chances are authorities will feel they must at least be seen to be doing something. They’ll go out of their way to make sure they’re not accused of offering special treatment for the Member from Burnaby. And in the end, Svend won’t be treated like an ordinary Canadian. He’ll be treated worse.