Although I am extremely sorry to the family of this man, I commend the reporter and the RCMP for identifying the type of car and posting the pictures for others to see. Not to be morbid but the public needs to see that even a quality type car such as a Camry cannot withstand brutal corners, such as there are in the canyon, at excessive speeds. Slow down people. Your life is far too valuable to gamble on mechanical trust of machines.

western2 I have to agree with you. My sympathies also go out to the family during what is an extremely trying and personally difficult time.

Lots of people know that speed kills but never think it is going to happen to them. But knowledge is power… and it provides us with important information. In this case SPEED KILLS!

I have been saying that over and over on this site (usually during the Friday Free For All) only to get bombarded with negative messages telling me to grow up and move over into the slow lane. However I still believe that those of you who speed up on the Hart are the ones who still speed on the highways during your travels to other municipalities and you need to slow down.

Seeing the photos from this speed related accident sends chill through because I know that there are plenty of people who speed and who also defiantly defend their actions.

My sincere condolences go out to the family. I cannot imagine what they must be going through.

It’s probably more correct to say that driving beyond your ability kills, not speed.

It’s attitudes like that, JohnnyBelt, that only perpetuate this problem. Despite what people may think of their driving ability, the higher your rate of speed, the lower your chance of being able to react to hazards and other vehicles. Seriously, driving ability? Why is it so hard for people to just suck it up and slow the @$&% down? Is it a manliness thing? You have to drive fast and show off your incredible driving ‘skills’? I don’t care how great your driving abilities are, this isn’t a car commercial – you are NOT the only person on the road.

Speed doesn’t kill!
Unskilled drivers that crash do though.

“Perpetuate”

LMAO!

I would echo that sentiment, JohnnyBelt. “Speed Kills” is another in a long list of buzz words that is losing its meaning, if it had any to begin with.

It especially makes me angry that the police are making declarations when they haven’t concluded their “investigation” yet. That is just pure stupidity and not fair to the memory of this man and his family.

Maybe he was speeding and that did add to the severity of the crash. It’s also a 15 year old car and a mechanical malfunction of any kind could have contributed to the crash. He is also an older man and could have had a heart attack, stroke or diabetic reaction. So many things could have happened, but we’ll never know.

My condolences to the family.

Just wanted to add – I’m not saying it doesn’t have anything to do with driving ability. But by saying “driving beyond your ability kills”, you’re suggesting that people are capable of deciding whether or not their skills are great enough that speeding is a ‘safe’ option for them. People are obviously not aware enough of their own driving abilities, the last thing we need is to perpetuate the idea that there is such a thing as speeding safely if your abilities allow. Do you think this man, or any other people involved in serious or fatal car accidents related to speed realized that they weren’t driving safely? I’m sick of people taking issue with the RCMP on matters like this. Slowing down is such a simple thing, it’s mind-numbing that we have such resistance to it…

Let’s not play the gender card. It’s not nothing to do with a ‘man’ thing or however you want to put it.

Izzyd: “you’re suggesting that people are capable of deciding whether or not their skills are great enough that speeding is a ‘safe’ option for them.”

Not at all. If people were able to correctly assess their own driving ability, we would have very few accidents. Most people if asked, would probably rate their own driving skills as ‘above average’ or better. And we all know that can’t be the case.

Unfortunately, most speed limits are set based on the worst drivers. I’m not suggesting that it should be ok to excessively speed, but there are cases where it is perfectly safe to go a little faster than the posted limit. And that’s where you’ll usually find the speed traps.

I agree with you – the places I have seen police setting up traps are usually those places that there isn’t really a danger in going over the limit (Foothills and Highway 97 N before the Mohawk come to mind). I should have clarified – it is excessive speeding I am referring to, not the 10-20 over that plenty of people do.

Very tragic I’m sure there were loved ones left behind my condolences to them.

What a tragic lose, my condolences to the family. But using the worn out catch-phrase of “Speed Kills” is ridiculous and out of touch with reality. Case in point; if “Speed Kills” then stay out of an air-plane, they can travel at 600 + mph and you are going to die! Yet millions travel safely everyday by air. Speed is relative to the road conditions at the time, the capability of the driver, the mechanical condition of the car, the quality of the tires, was there an animal on the road that the driver tried to avoid. Was he distracted, did he fall asleep, the list can go on. But the mantra of “Speed Kills” is just fodder to justify stiffer speeding fines and draconian speed laws!

Dragonmaster

You need some sort of drivers education so that you can understand that speed kills.

You’ve adopted the wrong attitude… and once again…. good luck with that.

I guarantee that there is hardly a driver out there on the roads today who is ABLE to handle a vehicle at speeds much beyond highway limits. Unless you have specific training and years of high speed experience then the majority of drivers, myself included, should keep to the posted limits. There is much, much more to fast driving then simply getting into your car and putting the pedal down….

Accidents are a function of speed and road conditions. The only ability every driver needs when behind the wheel is common sense to drive the conditions of the road, not one eye on the speed limit and one eye on the road.

Cheetos: “”Speed Kills” is ridiculous and out of touch with reality. ” … “Speed is relative to the road conditions at the time, the capability of the driver, the mechanical condition of the car, the quality of the tires, was there an animal on the road that the driver tried to avoid. Was he distracted, did he fall asleep, the list can go on. But the mantra of “Speed Kills” is just fodder to justify stiffer speeding fines and draconian speed laws! “

Well put.

Why can’t folks understand? Speed does kill, it ups the ante. But, Common Sense and Good Judgement go a long way to avoiding accidents. No matter how good a driver you think you might be, there’s someone out there who thinks they’re better and they think they can drive faster safely. It don’t add up, all the stats say yer dead wrong. Take life a little easier, stay off the damn cell phone, quit playing with the damn gps, and most important, concentrate on you driving.
Forget about the hot date yer gonna have, what’s fer supper, the ice fishing, just watch the road in front and behind, use yer situational awareness and arrive alive.

I posted this on the snowmobile thread, but it also belongs here
——————————————-
As soon as one steps into a car, one should get into a different mindset. A car is a wonderful tool, but it can also be very dangerous not only to yourself, but the hundreds of other people one encounters along a typical drive who can affect your well being due to something they do or the reverse.

One starts off with the concept of situational awareness, that is, take into consideration your state of mind, your abilities, the conditions of the vehicle, the road and weather conditions and, most of all the fact of “reading” all that information into your brain as time passes.

It does not matter what people think kills. The fact is all of the human and physical factors put together kill – frost on the road, darkness, poorly engineered roads, poorly maintained roads, excessive speed, faulty cars, needing to get home quickly, tuning in a radio station, drowsiness.

Hitting the ditch can happen at any posted highway speed. The consequence of hitting the ditch, depending on what the nature of the ditch is and the cliff which may be right there within 10 to 20 feet of the ditch (which it is in many locations on that stretch of highway as one near the tunnels) will not be much different at 80/100/120 km/hr … give or take one or two more flips ….

The real question is, why did the vehicle hit the ditch? That was the consequence of several factors. To say otherwise is to not understand the dynamics of driving.

I would love to see the investigation report on this crash. As drivers we should view more of those than these spur of the moment pat answers. They teach very little.

slim2229 has it right ….

BTW …. I put out another theory ….. it was 8pm … dark for several hours … alone in the car …. don’t know where he started from that day to presumably drive back to Surrey (he was apparently heading west) …. but could have been drowsy and had momentary inattention spans which ended up being one for a split second too long ……

We know he hit the ditch … we were not told whether the ditch was on the same side that he was travelling on or whether he was driving on the wrong side of the road when he hit the ditch on the opposite side of the correct lane … snapped out of the possible split second of drowsy inattention as he hit the different surface and reacted too fast with corrective steering and cause the flip …..

So, if that is what it was, then is it speed that killed?

I am waiting for the forencis people to bring back their report … but then again, we never hear about that. The “news” opportunity has come, has been taken, and is now gone ……

Yup; speed kills, so do bullets – and they have to go really fast to do it too.
All the laws in the world will not change death on the highways. The dead person didn’t learn anything from it. Neither will the next. Does anyone really think all this “speed kills” in the papers every year effects the people who speed? Get serious and get over it. Blah blah blah —speed kills–blah blah.

The award for common sense commenting is being awarded to Cheetos, and to Gus, for his 3rd comment on this story.
We don’t know if the driver of the Camry was speeding – excessively or otherwise.
If the fuzz have not concluded their investigation, then how can they conclude that SPEED! is the cause here?
The scenarios suggested by Gus are most plausible, and very possible, imho.
I rented a Camry once (and only once!!)
back in ’08, it was near new, very economical to drive, and we put on a few thousand kilometres. I am a person who likes to drive at or just above the posted speed limit on the straights, and speed up through the corners. I can assure you that the Toyota Camry that I drove was not a safe machine in which to corner aggressively. In fact, I found it somewhat dangerous to handle, it wallowed, there was a lot of body lean, and the tires.. well the tires would have been more suited to the safe handling of a wheelbarrow.
Point being, the Camry is not a car for high speed driving, it is more probable that other factors resulted in this crash.
Condolences to the family.
metalman.

Curves/ corners kill. I admit to travelling above the limit on icy/snowy roads from time to time – on straight stretches. I have studded winter tires, ABS/traction control. On a straight stretch minimal chance of getting in trouble – unless of course a moose decides to cross the road. A risk I’ve decided to accept. But on corners, I’m below the limit and P***ing off whoever is behind me – because tires lose traction exponentially when inertia is pushing one side to the other. But this goes to ability. I’ve been driving for decades, lost control on corners in the past – lived to tell about it – so I take it real easy on them now. I don’t have 4wd, so my traction control kicks in when the road is real slippery, and I know to slow down. 4wd often let’s you go a little faster than traction allows, which is why you often see them in the ditch – although the new ones are also coming out with traction control.

Speed kills if u don’t believe it then learn some basic physics!!! Ur energy when you hit something increases with the square of you speed so if you double ur speed you quadrupple ur energy so even the dummys that drive there big pickups want to look out when they hit something at hundred mile an hour. My prayrs to the family of the man who died GOD BLESS

You can die doing 5kmh just as easily as doing 50kmh. Speed is relative and death is a fact!