‘There’s nothing worth your life’: grieving mother
After death of teen daughter, woman speaks out about distracted driving
On Kailynn Bursic-panchuk’s 17th birthday, doctors in a Saskatoon hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit told her family she’d have “no quality of life” if she pulled out of the coma she’d been in for several days.
Six days earlier, the outgoing teen was driving to visit a friend when her vehicle was struck by a train near the Canadian Pacific rail yard close to Weyburn.
A CP Rail investigator later returned Kailynn’s phone to her family, and told her loved ones the collision was deemed to be the result of distracted driving.
Her mother, Sandra Larose, continues to grieve — and she is determined to share her story and convey a message to all drivers: put your phone away. Keep it out of sight and out of mind when you’re on the road.
“I just want people to know and to realize, if you’re not paying 100 per cent attention, one split-second lapse of judgment can cost you everything, cost your family everything. When you’re dead, you don’t get to do things over, there’s no rewind, there’s no joking around if you run a red light — ‘Oh, I’ll stop twice next time.’ There’s none of that. You’re dead,” she said.
On the day of the collision, Aug. 16, Kailynn had finished work and was expected to go home to help her mother in the family ’s garden, but made plans to visit a friend. Her mom resisted at first, but agreed to let her go out for the day.
Kailynn was turning onto a road east of the P&H grain elevator near the CP rail yard in an open area when her car was hit by a train.
Larose called it imperfect timing that her daughter’s car and the train were in the same place at the same time.
She said a CP Rail officer told her that her daughter’s phone was open to Google maps, but they didn’t believe she was holding the phone in her hand as she drove — the car had a standard transmission.
She also believes Kailynn may have been playing music at high volume in the car.
Her phone also had Snapchat notification alerts enabled, which would have been audible or visible even without the phone in hand.
According to Saskatchewan Government Insurance, distracted driving was a factor in 6,399 collisions, which resulted in 953 injuries and 26 deaths in 2017.
Kailynn died on Aug. 22, the day after her birthday. Her organs were donated according to her wishes.
Her liver and one kidney helped two people.
The liver recipient was doing well when Larose received a letter from the Saskatchewan Transplant Program, and the recipient of one of the kidneys was off dialysis.
The recipient of her other kidney had complications and it had to be removed. Her lungs and heart were matched, but due to logistical problems could not be donated.
Her pancreas went to Edmonton for research.
Kailynn had signed the organ donation consent sticker and put it on the back of her driver’s licence after hearing about late Humboldt Broncos’ player Logan Boulet’s decision to have his organs donated.
Boulet had signed his donor card the year before the collision involving the team’s charter bus and a semi-truck on April 6.
“The hard part was losing her. The decision to donate her organs was her decision, so it was not hard at all.
“It would have been if she was found not viable, but it was completely her decision. I just had to be the one that voiced it,” Larose said.
Manitoba is set to start imposing a bigger fine and increase the demerit points on drivers caught with a hand-held cellphone behind the wheel. Saskatchewan’s Minis- ter Responsible for SGI, Joe Hargrave, said the province will monitor what happens.
Saskatchewan has already banned drivers from handling their phones while driving.
Hargrave said the effects of this are apparent now, with more people being charged.
He said Saskatchewan’s distracted driving numbers are still not good, however.
“We’ve seen those trends start. We think that we need a little bit more time before we make any further adjustments to the program,” he said, adding the province isn’t averse to making changes to the distracted driving laws.
Kailynn was an honour roll student and would have graduated next spring from Weyburn Comprehensive School. Her mother describes her as book smart and street smart, funny and generous.
She had stood up to bullies on behalf of other students.
Larose found out from a girl in a closed Facebook group for teen girls dealing with low self-esteem and depression that her daughter joined the group to send positive, encouraging messages.
As long as people are willing to listen, she’s willing to continue speaking out.
Larose has already been approached by an instructor at a driving school in Weyburn to talk to students in drivers’ education classes.
“There’s nothing worth your life. There’s no phone call, no song, no text message, nothing, that is that important.”
She wants young drivers to see that all of the firsts that she should have had with her daughter will never be.
She says that she’s willing to speak with parents of teens learning to drive, to show them photos of the grad dress her daughter wanted to wear and bring the urn containing her ashes.
The hard part was losing her. The decision to donate her organs was her decision, so it was not hard at all.