Painful memories
Fatal crash reminds retired officer of how fortunate he was
The death of an Amherst RCMP officer in Memramcook, N.B. earlier this week brought back many painful memories for a retired officer.
Const. Francis Deschenes was killed when he was struck by a utility van on Tuesday evening while helping motorists change a tire on a busy stretch of the Trans Canada Highway.
The story is unsettlingly familiar for Paul Calder.
“I’ve spent a lot of time reliving my accident since I heard about the crash. There were so many similarities,” said Calder, who is a vocal proponent of the Nova Scotia government’s move-over legislation. “I was very lucky to have survived.”
Calder was on his way back to Amherst from Oxford on Remembrance Day, 2011, when he saw a vehicle off the highway and another that had stopped to help.
He pulled over and activated his safety lights. Finding there were no injuries, he asked the female driver of the car to sit in the front seat of the cruiser so he could question her about the crash.
“The next thing I remember, I was lying across the front seats of the car with a cool breeze across my face and looking up at Mike, a paramedic I knew,” Calder said. “Mike asked me if I knew where I was and I told him I thought I had an accident on the Pass. He said, ‘Not quite, we’re not on the Pass,
but you were in an accident.’”
A shuttle van destined for P.E.I. had struck the left rear of the cruiser, propelling it into the small truck. The van spun around and struck the truck as well, pushing it into the ditch, hitting the truck’s driver on the thigh and knee.
Calder ended up with a serious concussion, an injured shoulder and cuts and bruises. He had been unconscious 20 minutes. By that point, the woman he was talking with had to extricate herself from under what she thought was a dead RCMP officer, to get out of the car and call 911 on her cellphone.
To Calder, that crash and Tuesday’s collision that took Const. Deschenes’s life drive home the
need for motorists to slow down and move over when they approach any emergency vehicle on the highway.
“The law’s been in effect here for six years but there are a lot of people who still know nothing about it,” Calder said. “The powers that be have to do more to make people aware of it.”
Calder said there are signs near interchanges on highways in Alberta that remind people to move over and slow their vehicles to 60 km/h when passing emergency vehicles at the side of the road with their lights activated. He thinks that would be a good idea in his part of the country.
“When I was working, every time I got out of my vehicle I had
to be aware of what was coming on the highway,” he said. “You just never knew if you were going to get hit. Some people just don’t pay close enough attention to what they’re doing on the highway, especially when they come upon a police vehicle, ambulance or fire truck stopped at an accident on the highway. Most people move into the other lane, mostly out of courtesy without knowing it’s the law. Sometimes you can’t move over, but you have to slow down to 60 (km/h).”
He hopes the crash leads to increased public awareness about the safety of emergency responders at the roadside.