Dear Editor,

While on the way to work, my wife was involved in a serious vehicle accident in downtown Maple Ridge.

A woman with a young child in the back ran through a red light and hit my wife's car just behind the driver's door. The severity of the hit was so intense that it spun my wife's car around three times and she ended up in a parking lot across the intersection. Her car missed being wrapped around a light pole so close that there were paint chips from her car on the light pole.

She fortunately was able to walk away, and while the child in the offending car seemed unhurt walking around, the woman was taken away in an ambulance and will hopefully be OK.

An RCMP officer at the scene said my wife should buy a lottery ticket, as one thousandth of a second difference would have been devastating.

What makes this whole scenario so frightening is that, according to witnesses at the scene, the offending driver was on a cellphone, and though there was another car in the lane next to hers stopped at the red light, she went through it without any apparent attempt to slow down.

This comes after another relative of mine a while ago, while stopped at a red light in Maple Ridge with her children, was rear ended by a person apparently on a cell-phone who said they didn't see her vehicle stopped at the light.

I wish I could understand, but never will, why people are unable to drive from point A to B without having to be on a phone. What is so important to them that they would rather risk their lives, their children's lives, and the lives of everyone else around them?

It is apparent that the law and fines don't deter them, as you see people all the time, blatantly using their phones while driving.

We have the technology, and I sincerely hope that, if a person can be shown to be using a phone while involved in an accident, their insurance will be voided, and the authorities will come after them to recover all the costs of the accidents they cause.

Doug Stanger, Maple Ridge