Having lost his "best friend and the best wife" in a collision that claimed three lives, Olds’ Craig Mills has a message for every driver on the road.
Having lost his "best friend and the best wife" in a collision that claimed three lives, Olds’ Craig Mills has a message for every driver on the road.
"My dad taught me driving is a privilege, not a right and when we’re behind the wheel, we’re driving a vehicle that can hurt ourselves and other people and we need to be engaged," he said. "It is a job, it’s not a pastime."
It’s been nearly two months since Craig’s wife Donna, 56, was killed when the Acura SUV she was driving collided with a Ford Freestar minivan carrying six men from the Red Deer area on Highway 27 four kilometres east of Olds.
The crash also killed the minivan’s driver and a passenger and sent the vehicle’s four other occupants to hospital.
Police announced last month that an investigation into the collision failed to find a cause.
Craig said he doesn’t blame anyone for the collision and he also grieves for the families of the men killed in the minivan.
But in the wake of the tragedy, and because he sees so much dangerous driving when he’s out on the roads, he wants everyone to use more care behind the wheel.
"As we drive in Alberta, we’re seeing more and more people looking down at their cellphones, chatting on the phone, putting on makeup, eating a two-handed hamburger with one hand. There’s just things that you shouldn’t do," he said, adding people engaged in such activities while driving are "asking for grief.
"Why are we tempting fate?"
While driving, Craig said, people need two hands on the wheel, their seatbelt buckled and their focus should be outside the vehicle.
"That’s how I was raised."
Motorists and young drivers especially need to put their phones in a spot where they won’t cause a distraction and even conversations using Bluetooth technology should be kept short, he added.
"We now have a generation of young drivers that are glued to their phone. Glued to their notebook, they’re on Facebook constantly. If they can’t walk down the street without texting, if they can’t sit in their classroom without engaging in their smartphone and they don’t make a conscious decision to leave their phone out of hand’s reach, then I don’t trust that they’re going to be able to go for two hours on the highway and not be handling the phone.
When you get in, you strap in and leave your phone out of hand’s reach."
Craig, who is on the highway two or three times a week, said it also concerns him when he comes across people who have not equipped their vehicles with proper tires for winter conditions.
"I’m disappointed with that type of behaviour. It’s malice. If you can’t afford snow tires, maybe you shouldn’t make the decision to go out on the highway on a snowy day," he said.
And Craig wants the provincial government and police to hear his message as well.
He is calling on the province to do a better job of repairing and maintaining roadways before they crumble to a point where they become dangerous.
"How long does it take for us to realize that, what’s cheaper to invest in, roadways and pavement or people’s lives?"
Craig added he would also like to see Highway 2 expanded to six lanes with "more places for people to stop."
To deter people from engaging in unsafe driving, Craig said he’d like Alberta’s police to take a cue from their counterparts in the U.S.
He said unlike Canada, where police will often park at a place along a highway to monitor for speeders or unsafe driving, police in Montana and Idaho make their presence known on roadways by driving with the traffic they are monitoring.
People are therefore "conditioned" to drive safety, he added.
Such a system, Craig said, would be ideal for poor weather conditions.
"If the police are worried about driving conditions, get out on the road and drive at 100 or 95," he said, adding that way, people won’t pass them.
"I think for the amount of money that is spent on policing, another 10 per cent to buy 10 more cars and 10 more officers and have them on the road driving is cheap compared to the cost of insurance and carnage and just irresponsibility of everyone."
Since Donna’s crash, Craig said he and his family have become more cautious while driving.
He said he drives closer to the right side of his lane now and stays away from anyone who appears to be distracted.
Craig and his five children also communicate more before driving long distances and will only let family and friends know they are home when they’ve actually arrived at home.
Donna, he said, worked for a lingerie company and was always on the road for work.
She had texted him on Jan. 6 when she was leaving work in Calgary that she was about to drive home.
That was the last time Craig heard from his wife.
'A smile that just diffused everything’
Craig and Donna were married for nearly 37 years and Jan. 15, nine days after the crash, would have been the 40th anniversary of their first date.
"She had a smile that just diffused everything and it didn’t matter, she could be totally hot under the collar and she’d just have this totally lax attitude," Craig said. "She had a laugh that was totally unique. That’s how I met her. I never saw her before I heard her.
"And I heard her laugh and my heart flipped and I made it a point to seek her out and find who that person in that crowd was that had that laugh."
He added that everyone who knew Donna, from her family, to the friends she had known since kindergarten, to her customers, all thought the world of her.
"As I talked to people, 40 people said she was my best friend. That’s the type of person she was. She has nieces that say 'She’s my best aunt.’ Her sister said 'She’s my best sister,’" Craig said. "Kids, she touched them all. My kids are grieving in various stages. They all have to work through that. But they can’t be sad. Their mom was there as a mom. She was an awesome grandmother and she was the best friend and the best wife that I could ever have.
"She’s not replaceable."
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