FATAL DISTRACTION
TEXTING AND TALKING BEHIND THE WHEEL IS KILLING MORE CANADIANS THAN IMPAIRED DRIVING A FIVE-PART POSTMEDIA SERIES ON THE DEADLIEST THREAT OF OUR CONNECTED LIVES
NOTRE-DAME-DU-PORTAGE,
QUE. — Laura Tardif’s story comes together in fragments.
There is the empty bedroom in the basement of a house by the river. Or the picture that hangs above the dinner table: Laura smiling as she tugs on her scarf.
Then there is Laura’s mother, Claudie Landry, sitting at the family computer on a muggy August afternoon, scrolling through the digital footprint her child left behind.
She opens a video of Laura sporting a white karate gi in the middle of a high school gymnasium. As she fights her way across the computer screen, Laura isn’t much bigger than a paperclip. Her younger sister, Anne, watches over Claudie’s shoulder, placing a hand on her mom’s back.
A coroner’s report coldly details the 18-year-old’s final moments.
It’s 8:14 p.m. on June 21, 2014, and Laura is driving her Mazda 3 north in L’Isle-Verte. She sends a text message to her friend. Two minutes later, a reply comes buzzing on Laura’s iPhone.
The car approaches a rail crossing at the crest of a hill. The crossing’s red lights flash, its bells clang and the oncoming locomotive sounds its whistle four times.
But Laura never slows down. The train barrels into Laura’s car at 64 kilometres an hour. The coroner concludes Laura didn’t see the train coming because she was using her phone.
It is a story unfolding across the country — in the back of speeding ambulances, on operating tables and in smouldering wrecks along the sides of highways.
Distracted driving is believed to be among the leading factors in fatal collisions in every province and territory in Canada. Fines for using your cellphone behind the wheel range from $80 to $1,500 across Canada, with drivers facing between three and five demerit points. But experts say these measures aren’t enough.
Quebec coroner Renée Roussel investigated the death of a 75-yearold pedestrian who was struck by a car near Quebec City last year. Her inquiry found that the driver was using his cellphone at the time of the fatal crash.
“There are basically no cases in front of the courts that have held a person criminally responsible for the death of another because they were using their cellphones while driving,” Roussel wrote.
“Regardless of the consequences of their actions, the worst a driver found guilty can face is a fine and a few demerit points.”
In a new series, Fatal Distraction, Postmedia examines the human toll of distracted driving.
It didn’t seem real at first, when the officers knocked at Claudie Landry’s door to tell her that her daughter was dead.
“I could actually feel my heart sink, I could feel a numbness overtake my body.” Claudie Landry
“I could actually feel my heart sink, I could feel a numbness overtake my body. Even when the reality of it sinks in, when you finally realize you’ve lost your oldest child, it still doesn’t make sense.”
The day before Laura died, she wrote a math exam to earn the final credits she needed to go to college. In two months, she’d begin interior design classes at Cégep de Rivière-du-Loup and Laura would have her hands full that summer waitressing at the local golf course.
On that evening, though, Laura was having fun.
It was the first day of summer and she was visiting her new boyfriend in Saint-Éloi. Afterwards, she’d stop by her grandparents’ house before meeting up with her friends at a rodeo in nearby Saint-Antonin.
She left her boyfriend’s place around 8 p.m. and drove along the country roads that would lead her back home. Less than 15 minutes into the drive, a friend texted her about their plans to meet later that night.
Investigators would later say the collision was caused, in part, by a case of spectacularly bad timing.
Had Laura’s car arrived at the rail crossing just 2.5 seconds later, it would have sailed passed the train untouched. The train was only about 45 metres long — two locomotives bound for a factory in nearby Rivière-du-Loup.
But by the time the crew saw Laura’s car, it was too late.
Firefighters had to saw open the vehicle to pull Laura’s body from it. The impact from the locomotive severed her spinal column at the neck, killing her instantly.
“They told me her head was leaning forward when they found her. It was like she’d fallen asleep,” Claudie said. “There were other factors at play but when you’re driving a car, you can’t avert your eyes, you need to be giving your full attention to the road. Just a few seconds, a momentary lapse, can be fatal. If Laura had survived that crash, I’m confident she’d be spreading that message.”
The reality of Laura’s death came across in small, incredibly painful changes to the family routine.
“One day, you’re setting four plates at the dinner table and the next it’s three,” said Claudie. “I started locking the front door before going to bed. I never used to do that because Laura would be out with her friends.”
Two days after the crash, Claudie and Laura’s sister, Anne, curled up on the couch and watched the season premiere of the TV show Teen Wolf.
“It seems silly but it’s something the three of us girls used to do together, it was our show,” said Claudie. “So when we watched the show that night, we brought a picture of Laura on the couch with us and laid out some of her clothes as well. We never wanted to run away from her memory.”
Laura’s room remains much like it was before the crash. Her bed is made. Her karate gi still dangles from a wire hanger between shirts and dresses in the closet.
There’s also a photo collage Laura had affixed to the wall next to her dresser. It captures the life an outgoing teenager: Laura at the lake with friends, Laura in a formal dress, Laura making a funny face, Laura in her high school graduation gown.
On the dresser, near the collage of her life, an urn holds her remains.
Last June, the Tardif returned to train tracks in L’Isle Verte, where Laura died.
On a warm day, the crash site is a perfect slice of Quebec’s Bas-St-Laurent region.
The rails trace a line from a strawberry field by the highway to the summit of knoll that overlooks the water. They pass a barn and a rusted out fishing boat before arriving at the place they recovered Laura’s body.
Below the hilltop, the St. Lawrence River widens and cascades into the sea. A fog gathers over the water at dusk, rolling into the mountains on the northern riverbank.
In the spring and summer months, the air here is thick with the smell of freshly cut grass and algae.
But there are also traces of Laura’s final moments in this place: shards of glass embedded in the rail ties, bits of the Mazda’s windshield wiper and other debris sprinkled into the gravel under the tracks.
After she died, the family planted a wooden cross next to the tracks. They carved Laura’s name into it and laid flowers at the foot of the cross.
The wound isn’t as fresh as it once was but Claudie recalls how the emotions of that day overtook her.
“The train passed that and it blew its whistle,” she said. “In a way it was like reliving the pain from that day all over again. But it also felt like Laura was sending us a message, like she was letting us know she was there.”