SQ hopes sobering wreck
At annual auto show will have an impact on drinking and driving.
At Montreal’s International Auto Show, midway between the $500,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom and a 2013 powder blue Volkswagen Beetle, sits the crumpled hulk of a 1982 Camaro in which two men died four months ago.
They ran off a country road near Drummondville, driving fast on booze and worn out tires, with no seat belts. There are broken beer bottles on the floor in the back seat, shattered windshield glass in the front and a radiator pushed up almost into the steering wheel from the force of the crash.
All is exactly as it was when police discovered the vehicle on the night of Sept. 16, except the bodies of 21-year-old driver Pierre-André PerronGaumond and passenger Marc Chabot, 36, have been removed, and their blood cleaned out.
It is one of the most popular exhibits at the car show.
“We weren’t sure what reaction it might get — it was a bit of a risk,” said officer Eugenio Vincent of the Sûreté du Québec, which is putting on the exhibit. “Will people be upset, or shocked?”
Instead, he said, most people have been positive, despite the effect of vehicular death intruding on their dreamscape of luxury automobiles.
“It shows that life is not just about beautiful cars,” Vincent said. “Sadly, there are other realities.”
Shock was the intention of the driver safety exhibit, particularly as a means of reaching a younger generation that tends to believe itself invincible, that thinks accidents like the one on display will never happen to them, Vincent said. Studies have shown youth respond more to hard-hitting awareness campaigns that spark an emotional response. The SQ had been searching for new ideas when this accident, which had all the risk factors associated with a disaster in waiting, occurred.
They approached the families of the victims, and the families said yes.
Accompanying the wreck is a video depicting what happened on the night of the crash: the car was driving at between 110 and 120 kilometres an hour in an 80 km/h zone on a straight stretch of rural highway. Suddenly, it veered right into the sloped ditch, then collided violently with a small overpass. Chabot was catapulted from the car. Both men died at the scene. Police believe the right front tire blew out. In 30 per cent of fatal accidents, occupants were not wearing their seat- belts say the statistics flashed onscreen. The number rises to 40 per cent in accidents involving occupants between the ages of 16 and 24.
Spectators at the auto show said they appreciated the exhibit.
One man, who asked not to be named because 25 years as a guard in a federal penitentiary had made him publicity shy, said the exhibit did not go far enough. Police needed to post pictures of the victims, he said.
“Too many of our beautiful young men and women die like this,” the man said. “They need to drive the point home more.”
Vincent of the SQ said it was possible next year the message could be stronger, but for now, bringing in the remnants of a fatal car crash to the auto show, which runs until Jan. 27 at the Palais des congrès, was unprecedented, and a good start.
Unlike the Ferraris and the Bentleys, people were allowed to touch the wreck, and many did so, quietly. Most spent more time with the 30-year-old Camaro then they did posing for pictures with the Lamborghinis.