A Credo To Live By

Chris Selley: You can't cheat death, and you probably shouldn't try

Posted: May 20, 2009, 10:35 PM by Chris Selley

Of all the wise things Tony Soprano ever said, perhaps the most profound was to his psychiatrist on the topic of Anthony Jr. having wrecked his mother’s car: “You can’t put shit back in the donkey.” This is an excellent life lesson, but one that’s understandably difficult to keep top of mind in the wake of a preventable tragedy. All tragedies being in some sense preventable—if we banned air travel, there would be no plane crashes—there’s a natural urge to take steps to ensure they don’t happen again. Recent events in Ontario and New Brunswick illustrate the attending pitfalls.

On July 3, 20-year-old Tyler Mulcahy took a boozy lunch with three friends in Ontario’s cottage country, then drove them into Lake Muskoka. Only a female passenger survived. In response, Mulcahy’s father launched a campaign to change the rules for younger drivers that seemed to be designed to prevent his son, retroactively, from dying. (That sounds horribly callous. I don’t mean it to.) Tyler had accrued demerit points for speeding, so his father suggested speeding tickets result in an automatic licence suspension. Tyler had been drinking, so he suggested zero tolerance for even a trace of alcohol in a driver’s blood. Tyler had three friends with him in the car, so he suggested people not be allowed to drive their friends around. Tyler was under 21, so that’s the age to which he suggested the restrictions should apply.

Click here to read more...