PREPAYING FOR GAS SAVES LIVES

Alberta introduced legislation Monday that would require drivers to pay for their gas before filling up. If passed, it would take effect June 1, 2018. This measure comes too late for Thorsby gas station owner Ki Yun Jo who died last month when he was run over while trying to stop the driver of a stolen cube van from bolting with $200 in unpaid fuel.

After his death, Labour Minister Christina Gray promised to take action on an epidemic of gas-and-dash thefts and the needless injuries and deaths that too often result. Credit goes to her for following through, but why did it take so long for any provincial government to act on this life-saving legislation?

Ki Yun Jo was not the first to die while working at a gas station in Alberta. Calgarian Maryam Rashidi died in 2015 trying to stop a pickup trick from driving off with a tank of unpaid gas.

In 2015, Surinder Pal Singh died after sustaining head injuries during an altercation with a customer at an Edmonton gas station.

A total of five workers have died and three others have been injured in gas-and-dashes across Alberta over the last three years. Given the alarming frequency of this crime, it’s a wonder that more innocent lives haven’t been lost. The high cost of fuel and the availability of a getaway vehicle close at hand make driving off without paying too tempting for the criminalminded.

One estimate from the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police puts the number of fuel-theft incidents across the province in 2015 at 4,000; that’s an average of nearly a dozen a day. In Edmonton, there have been 583 gas-and-dashes so far this year.

Edmonton police Chief Rod Knecht says following up each of those cases takes four hours of investigation — enormous time and cost that will be saved if gas-and-dashes are eliminated as a crime.

Critics point to the $30,000 per-pump cost of switching to pre-pay technology but retailers can simply require customers to pay by cash or credit card before filling up.

Mandatory pre-pay is already in wide use in other jurisdictions, such as British Columbia, which was the first in Canada to adopt it in 2008 after young gas station attendant Grant De Patie was fatally struck and dragged in 2005 while trying to stop a fleeing motorist from stealing $12 worth of gas.

Since the so-called Grant’s Law took effect, no one in B.C. has died because of a gas and dash.

Let’s hope that Ki Yun Jo becomes the last person to die in Alberta because of a gas and dash, because no fill-up is worth a life.