To Perturb and Neglect
I know I have been gone a while, but I have a great reason. I have a son now!
I'm getting back into the swing of things, so look for some posts again soon. For now, here is a letter to the editor of the T&T that will hopefully appear soon!
To The Editor,
Imagine this scenario:
You're driving along with your two week old son snugly buckled in his car seat on your way to pick your husband up at work. As you are preparing to turn into the parking lot off a very busy main artery, a pickup truck goes by with a large patio swing totally unsecured in the bed of the truck.
You watch in horror as a stiff wind catches the canopy of the swing and send it toppling over the side of the truck directly into the driver's side of your car - Smashing your side mirror, denting your hood and fender, and almost breaking your driver's side window.
You pull into a nearby parking lot - still shaken - check on your son, and wait for the driver of the truck to pick the debris from the swing off the road to join you in the parking lot while you call the police.
It should be a pretty open and shut case, right? The driver of the truck was negligent in securing his cargo; and as the driver of the car you should not be held at all responsible for the damage to your vehicle. At the very least, the truck's owner should be ticketed for failing to secure his load, right?
Anywhere else, this would be the case - But not in the "Bizzarro World" of Moncton.
This very situation happened to my wife on Tuesday afternoon. When the representative from the local constabulary arrived on the scene, she was bluntly told that no charges would be laid unless she wanted to appear in court to file them. On top of that, as the guy who hit my wife was clumsily trying to put his huge swing back in the bed of his truck - And not having much luck - the RCMP officer told my wife, "It's not my job to determine who is at fault".
With all due respect, Detective Ray Charles or Office Stevie Wonder could have seen who was to blame for this situation... And it wasn't my wife.
To the officer on the scene : If your job wasn't to determine fault, it certainly must have been to joke around with the driver of the truck after the accident or let him drive away with the swing still unsecured to hit some other innocent motorist - Because you were very adept at both of those things during your "investigation".
Because of this situation, my wife's insurance rates are now going to go up - Despite having a spotless driving record up until today. The driver of the truck? He walks away free of consequence.
The only "good" part of this whole thing is that neither my wife or child were hurt due to this display of sheer negligence. If they had been, I can assure you that my reaction would extend beyond a sarcastic letter to the Times and Transcript.
So there you have it. It's great to know that I can now throw anything from a furnace to a fiberglass canoe unsecured in the back of a truck and rip around Moncton without any regard for the safety of others. After all, I'll have the RCMP on my side!
Steve Malloy
Moncton
Comments (3)
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Give the CVE [Commercial Vehicle Enforcement] boy's a call. An unsecure load in a truck is an offence under the Commercial Transportation laws and anything falling from the truck or it's load is also the truck drivers fault. This truck driver most certainly should have been fined.
You might also try giving the Chief of Police a call.