Seatbelts: Arrive alive

There are some places you just don’t go, like the bad part of town or a gated army base, or the highway entrance from de l’Eglise Ave. toward the Decarie in Verdun.

The merge lane is deathly short and truck traffic headed across the island stays in the right lane. Traffic slows in the merge, but you have to gun it once there’s a brief opening. It’s not safe and so I avoid it.

Except for that one time in early June, when I was late for a funeral. Part of the lady’s family was with me, including her grandson, and I was worried about the time.

The entrance is a long, blind curve and I took it slowly because, as I’d suspected, traffic was stopped in the short merge. I was almost at a standstill when I looked into my rearview mirror and locked eyes for the briefest of moments with the driver of the white pickup truck behind me.

He was going at least 50 kilometres an hour and I saw his face the moment he realized he should have been more cautious. A fraction of a second later, he was crushing my trunk and I was instinctively steering into the cement barrier, away from the fast-moving traffic in the right lane.

We missed the funeral, but the most serious injury was whiplash that took a couple of weeks to heal. Seatbelts. Without seatbelts, gods know how bad it might have been.

Buckle up. I’m serious about this one.