6 B.C. LUMBER WORKER 1st Issue, April HE TALKS ABOUT OUR By GILBERT R. CARREL Chief Colorado State ‘Patrol It could just be that you that letter the other day. You really told me off. You said dumb highway patrolmen had given you a ticket one of my for speeding when you had a a hurry. According to your letter, which you didn't sign, you think the highway patrol could make better use of its time by chasing down the ‘real menaces to safety on the highways instead of bothering up- Standing citizens like yourself. Oh, you were quite indigant. You went on to say that you were Bothering Upstanding Citizens are the person who wrote me legitimate reason for being in on urgent business, that you never had been in an accident of your own making; that you are a fast driver but a safe driver and, more- over, that you are a more import- ant man to the community than the stupid cop who gave you the ticket. Well now let me tell you some-| before you have to learn it the thing. I'm mad, too. I’m mad all| hard way in a hospital, or you the time although my anger is not] wind up on a morgue slab. directed at you alone. So far as you're concerned, I’m happy that] were able to slow you down before we were able to catch you in time.|.you killed yourself—or mained I hope we taught you a lesson, al-| somebody else who was driving though I’m afraid we didn’t. I} carefully to protect both himself hope we taught you something] and you, too! ; It makes me feel good that we What makes,me mad? A lot of things. I’m burned up because people as intelligent as you some- times behave like idiots. I’ve seen a lot in my service with the high- way patrol. I've had to look at things that would turn your stomach, They made me sick, too, because I'm not different from you except that it’s my business to keep you alive while you're driv- ing, even if I have to stop you and haul you off to jail. I wouldn't have to be so harsh, Dead Don’t Complain perhaps, if you could see at first hand the murder and savage mut- ilation on our highways — your highways. I wish sometimes you would have to go with me to the scene of an accident. I would like to make you stand, as I’ve had to do, and watch the pitiful flopping of a man dying in a barrow pit, or help scrape the bits of bone and mang- led flesh of a whole family into baskets at a grade crossing. You'd vomit as I have done. But you'd think different the next time you got behind the wheel of an automobile. If some foreign power killed and wounded as many of our citizens as our motorist to, each year—you would be ready to take up arms and fight to stop it. And yet a great many who are responsible for this terrible loss of life and limb and lifelong suf- fering are individuals like yourself “fast” but “safe” drivers and “important” people in a big hot hurry. You said the officer who gave you the ticket didn’t argue with you but that his manner was in- solent. The trouble with you is that you don't recognize sincerity when you see it. Our men are under orders not to argue, but to be firm, fair and impartial. I doubt that he was insolent—especially since he didn't argue with you. He was merely concerned — concerned with your safety and the safety of the hun- dreds of others on the highway. You say you were driving safely? That's what the woman thought a few short months ago when she overturned on an icy strip on the highway not more than 500 yards from the point at which you said the patrolman stopped you. If that patrolman had been there and cautioned that woman before she hit that ice patch at 75 miles an hour, she would still be here; her children would have the af- fection of their mother and a hus- band would have been spared un- necessary grief and cost. Maybe she would have written a letter of complaint, too. It's only the dead ones who don't complain. Mad again? So was the young- DRIVING ster down on highway 160. He had some personal reason for be- ing mad. “I'll show you how mad I can get,” he told his companions. His broken body was picked up near the end of a 500-foot skid mark. They found his head on the prairie a hundred feet away. Big Hot Hurry It's better to be alive and mad, or alive and late than dead and still in a hurry. That was the case when the salesman a few. nfonths ago rounded a curve on highway 87-85. He was on an important call, but he never kept his ap- pointment. We picked his head off the pavement and scraped his body together from beneath his auto- mobile. Are sales that important? You'll never collect the commis- sion that way. Neither will your widow. The trouble with so many drivers is that they have dual personalities. Too often, a highly respected businessman, a gentleman in his profession and a social leader in the community, becomes a danger- ous egotist behind the wheel. The respect he normally displays for his fellow citizens becomes sub- merged in a conviction of superi- ority arising from his control of two tons of steel and 150 or 200 horsepower. He blows his horn at pedestrians or drivers who threaten to interfere with his lord- ly progress. Whatever lane he chooses is his exclusive property, and sometimes he takes part of two lanes. He picks any speed that suits his fancy. He is too big to be anything but contemptuous of the traffic of- ficer who questions his driving ability. His favorite retort is “I’ll have your job for this, copper!” Maybe you're one of these big shots and that’s what's bothering you. Or maybe you're one of the from the boss but who becomes a tyrant when he’s driving. All he has to do to get even with the world is step on the gas. He has as much right as anyone else and he will assert it even if it means killing himself or the other fellow. Do you wonder that I'm mad all the time? So many of the people I do business with are downright stupid for no good reason. Yet, anywhere but be- hind the wheel of a high-powered machine, they're normal, intelli- gent, thinking, considerate humans. Then there are kids who should- n't be allowed the use of the family car until they learn common sense. I went home the: other night saddened. I had listened to a father blubber like a baby. The last time I talked to him before that, he was lecturing me. His son was a good driver, he said. Sure, weaving in and out of traffic, digging out on the green. Well, we had picked up the boy on two occasions and were ready to ground him for keeps. Then before we could do it, the serious smashup that we had anticipated, happened. The boy’s body was being wheeled out of the operating room to the morgue when the father broke down and cried: “I killed my own son trying to prove that I was right. I hate myself.” Let me ask you: Do you believe we should allow some idiot to risk your life and the lives of your family members just because he wants to be there in time for the kickoff? Would we be doing our Milquetoasts—the meek little guy who spends his life taking orders duty in letting him off with just He Wore a Photographs reproduced above workmen wearing safety shoes why there is any danger of objects fall This lesson was brought ho while he was working last July at transfer chain at the Eburne Sa’ Ltd. While reaching for a short pig slab and his right foot was pinned of the transfer chain “ the safety shoes Bert was weari enough for him to pull his foot When his shoe was taken off been squeezed around his big toe two fractured toes. a few words of warning?