On principle, I usually oppose excess government regulation, especially when there’s scant evidence that it is warranted (e.g. the handheld cell phone ban, which has popular but virtually no evidentiary support). But, unlike that law, I happen to think that this one is very sensible.

Look, people, it’s quite simple. In Quebec, we have winter. Winter means lots of snow. And ice. And cold. If you’re driving in that weather without proper winter tires, you’re not only endangering yourself, you’re endangering everyone else on the road. The rubber compound in winter tires is designed for the cold temperatures, and the tread provides more traction on snow and ice. Last winter, 10% of cars on the road didn’t have winter tires, but they accounted for 38% of accidents. Driving without winter tires in winter isn’t safe. Period.

There are provisions made for people who store their cars or go south for the winter. There was plenty of warning to get equipped. The main difficulty will be in enforcement, and police will probably grapple with that one for a while. But aside from that, it’s a good law, designed to protect drivers and passengers and prevent deaths.

Most of the whining seems to be about the cost of winter tires. But owning and operating a vehicle costs money. Even if you own your car free and clear and are no longer making car payments, there’s insurance, gas, parking, maintenance, all to the tune of thousands of dollars a year. Winter tires will cost you several hundred dollars, true, but you can amortize that cost over several seasons. Plus, you’ll extend the life of your summer tires by only using them for half the year.

Bottom line: The cost of winter tires is a fraction of the total cost of car ownership. If you can’t afford the tires, you shouldn’t be driving a car, so quit whining and get a bus pass. You’ll save thousands and help the environment, too. Otherwise, invest in a good set of winter tires. For your sake, and for everyone else’s.

This is the way the tide has been moving for a while now, all over the world. So I can’t say I’m too surprised. I even understand the arguments for it. Distracted drivers are dangerous, and cell phone use is distracting, no doubt.

But I still strongly disagree with the ban, for several reasons:

• Plenty of other distractions exist aside from cell phones. Are we also going to ban fumbling with the radio dial, sipping morning coffee, talking to passengers, dealing with crying children in the backseat, driving while distracted, or driving while tired? Where does it end?
• Cell phones reduce stress, which in turn reduces accidents. Who do you think the better driver is going to be? The person driving erratically through traffic to get to a client meeting on time? Or the one who can simply phone ahead and explain that the traffic has caused a delay, and then relax and drive the rest of the way there without panicking?

• Cell phones are most useful in cars when there’s an emergency. The man who phones ahead to the hospital to let them know that his wife is in labour and they’re on their way in surely doesn’t deserve a ticket.

• On very long drives, it can actually help to phone someone and talk to them, to avoid road fatigue and to stay alert.

• Truckers, bus drivers and taxi drivers communicate via CB or central radio dispatches. Are there plans to ban those practices too? If not, why not? If the excuse is because to them it’s useful, then consider that to many individuals, the ability to talk on the phone while driving is also useful. What’s good for the goose ought to be good for the gander, after all.

• It’s a naked revenue grab. Too many people are bound to break this law, resulting in higher ticketing revenue for the government.

• It’s a politics-only move. Like restricting liquids on planes. It plays into the stereotypes of the evil, SUV-driving suburbanites with their cell phones wreaking havoc on the roads. It doesn’t really make anyone safer, it just makes people feel safer. In my opinion, that’s a shoddy reason to restrict personal freedom.

The point is, this is probably going to be law, one way or the other. It’s too unpopular, politically, to make arguments against a total ban. But it’s a waste of a law. To truly improve our road safety, energy could be better focused elsewhere.

Natural Resources Minister Claude Bechard, who announced Wednesday that a 0.8-cent-a-litre carbon tax will come into force on Oct 1, added that he hopes the oil companies, which are reporting record profits, would absorb the tax and not pass it on to the consumer. Oil industry spokespeople were unavailable for comment late Wednesday afternoon.

[ . . . ]

Asked why he thinks the oil companies will absorb the carbon tax, Bechard said, “Well, we count on the goodwill of the gas companies.”

Hah! Yeah, right. Cause we all know that the gas companies have philanthropy as their main purpose.

This may be a popular move for votes (big bad oil companies versus the underprivileged environment) but people don’t necessarily understand the impact of higher fuel prices. It’s not just SUV owners who get hit; trucks, public transit itself, shipping and the economy in general will all have to pay. The trickle-down effect raises prices on all consumer goods and on cost of living in general.

But of course, our government has a solution for that, too:

Bechard has also threatened to impose a ceiling price on gasoline. Wednesday he said an announcement on that matter would be made in a “few days.”

Right, because everyone knows that what our economy in Quebec desperately needs is more government regulation.

And to think, I was so optimistic after last week’s budget. Looks like that was a temporary blip; we’re back to business as usual in La Belle Province.

But I’m alive and nobody shot me or shot at me. So all in all, I’d have to say it’s been a pretty good day.

Funny what a little perspective does sometimes to make our daily problems seem minor in comparison.

Some are bringing their kids to school and helping them get settled in the residence. Others are just visiting friends or relatives, or simply taking a weekend vacation. Whatever their reasons for being here, though, they have one thing in common: They don’t know how to drive in Quebec.

Even though their license plates are nearly the same colour as ours, they’re easy to spot: They’re the ones going 100kph in the fast lane; they even slow to 70 on the Met, thinking for some strange reason that the speed limits mean something here. They stop at crosswalks. They use their turn signals. They make 3-second stops at stop signs. They stubbornly insist on driving at their speed even when all the traffic around them is whizzing by and giving them a honk-and-finger tabarnac.

In short, they’re a major menace and they’re bound to cause numerous accidents. Watch out for them.

A toxic spill in the West Island yesterday forced people to stay indoors and shut down part of the Trans-Canada Highway, causing chaos for motorists.

[ . . . ]

The driver escaped without injury, but the accident burst open the truck’s container, exposing its contents to the atmosphere.

A hazardous materials response team from the Montreal fire department worked with local firefighters to attempt to limit the danger. But the chemical ignited about three hours after the truck turned over.

The “hazardous material” was sodium hydrosulfate, which, upon igniting, filled the air with its by-product, sulfur dioxide. The rotten egg smell was especially pleasant to be breathing while sitting in traffic that looked something like this:

Photo credit: Montreal Gazette

Anyway, they got it all cleaned up eventually, and hopefully nobody will get cancer because of this in 30 years.

(By the way, I even made it to Kol Nidre services on time).

Hope everyone had a meaningful fast, and best wishes for a good year.

Earlier today, I had to break into my own car when my car alarm inexplicably stopped working. At first, I thought the battery was dead on the clicker. But after trying the spare, I realized it was a problem with the alarm itself. Unlocking the car with the key did not set the alarm off, as it was supposed to, but the car wouldn’t start because there’s an ignition kill switch. In the end I had to disconnect the battery to reset the alarm. And all this for what? Car alarms don’t actually deter theft; they just provide a discount on insurance rates.

Then I got home to see a fire truck outside my apartment building. Minor panic gave way to relief when the firemen told me that the fire was outside on an electric pole and not inside, and that it was perfectly safe to enter. But the power was out for a while. It’s amazing how much an hour-long power outage wreaks havoc with life. The temperature in here is easily over 30 degrees, and without electricity of course my fan doesn’t work. Heating up dinner wasn’t possible, and I was worried that the food in the freezer would defrost and ruin. Just home from the gym I was craving a shower, but of course there was no hot water.

But there’s a flip side. With the power out, nobody could do much of anything, so people from my building and the one across the street just stood out on their balconies or fire escapes and chatted. There was actual evidence of human contact for, oh, about 15 minutes. Then the power came back on and we all went back inside to get back to our daily lives – or, in my case, to blog about it.

So now the car alarm’s working, the power’s on, the food’s in the oven and the fan is cooling down my apartment. And maybe I’ll meet some more neighbours during the next power failure.

An incensed Iranian motorist doused his car in petrol and set it ablaze with a match after picking up a parking ticket, media reported Wednesday.

The ISNA student news agency posted photographs of the charred shell of the car on its Web site and quoted witnesses describing the driver’s frantic but fruitless pleas to the parking attendant not to issue a ticket.

“Extremely angry, he took a jerrycan of petrol out of the boot and set fire to his car,” ISNA quoted a witness in poor south Tehran as saying.

I’m not too sure what he’d hoped to accomplish with that one. I wonder if he still has to pay the ticket?

Why does this not surprise me? A Civic owner myself, I don’t have any particular use for SUVs. They’re big, they’re clunky, they use a ton of gas. Not exactly my cup of tea.

But something tells me that banning them – especially in Europe, where most people already sensibly drive smaller cars than they do here in North America – is less about practicality and more about politics. Somehow, SUVs have joined McDonald’s and, well, Israel, as symbols of the hated capitalist-American-imperialist ideology that the socialists love to hate. Especially in France. After all, why else pick on SUVs and not, say, minivans or commercial vehicles?

I’m a big hero because I take the train and the métro to work, right? But yesterday morning was so cold that the Great Environmentalist left his car idling in the driveway for five minutes to warm it up for the drive to the train station.

In 1996, 10.1 per cent of Canada’s workforce used public transit. Five years later, it was 10.5 per cent.

That’s 1.4 million strap-hangers, compared with 10 million drivers (and another one million passengers in private vehicles.)

This is why there’s going to be war in Iraq. We’re petroleum junkies – and the census makes a pretty good case that Whitney Houston’s rehab is going better than ours.

I’ve heard the argument before that anyone who drives a car is public enemy #1. To that I say, give us decent public transit, and we won’t be forced to drive our cars as much. Does anyone really think I like sitting in gridlock twice a day? But I digress.

The theory that there will be war in Iraq because Bush simply woke up one morning and decided he’d like to see lower prices at the pump is incredibly absurd – to say the least. But of course, if Mike Boone believes it so much, he can sell his car. It won’t make the least bit of difference. Saddam Hussein will still be trying to acquire dangerous weapons to unleash on Israel and the West, and to use to massacre his own people. He’ll still be a crazy dictator and a world menace, and a major sponsor of terrorism. But if it makes Boone feel better . . .

Legislation banning handheld cellphones in cars was just passed by the Newfoundland cabinet.

“I know that all the other provinces realize that the use of cellphones by drivers is a problem,” said Walter Noel, the province’s government services minister. “They have various reasons not to act on it to date (but) I think we’ll see more provinces act before very long,” he said in an interview Friday.

Anyone caught breaking the law will receive four demerit points on their driver’s licence and fines ranging from $45 to $180.

This law is both restrictive and ridiculous. There are tons of idiots who drive erratically while on the phone, true. But there are also many people who use the phone responsibly. And what about other distractions, such as changing the radio station, drinking coffee, or checking makeup in the rearview mirror? Should all of those things be banned too?

Cell phone laws are always advocated by people looking for an easy scapegoat for road accidents. But there were plenty of accidents before cell phones were invented, and there will be plenty more even after this ban is imposed. Studies have indicated that there is no evidence that cell phone use causes accidents. This is a fluff law, designed to appease the public while solving nothing.

It’s about time someone stopped the madness. Parking is already expensive enough without adding even more tax.

Parking spaces rake in $600 to $700 a year in hidden taxes, said Pierre Cléroux of Groupe Urbain, a coalition of businessmen who, backed by the chamber of commerce, oppose the tax.

“A supplementary tax on parking spaces is not justifiable – and for us it’s unacceptable,” he said. “For a person who has a monthly parking space in Montreal, 40 per cent of the cost is (already) taxes.”

Environmentalists and city planners usually advocate raising taxes on gas and parking as a means of discouraging people from driving and encouraging them to switch to public transit.

But I take serious issue with that. I’d love nothing more than to be able to leave my car at home – or sell it – and use a reliable, efficient public transportation system instead. It would save me money on gas, insurance, and maintenance, as well as the headaches of rush hour and the concern about drinking and driving, just to name a few reasons.

The trouble is, that reliable, efficient public transportation system doesn’t exist. Not for us suburbanites anyway. Our buses are few and far between and we don’t have a metro. Commuter trains are only convenient to people going straight downtown and back, and only at peak hours. My daily commute to work – maybe 75 minutes round-trip, even in traffic – would take well over 4 hours by public transit. Efficient? Hah!

The carrot-and-stick method of persuasion only works if you offer a carrot; namely, improved public transit. Until that happens, the government can wield the tax stick all it wants, and people will keep driving. We simply don’t have a choice.

SIX MILE, Ala. (AP) – Two sisters were killed when their vehicles collided head-on on a rural highway as they travelled to visit each other, authorities said.

Authorities said the women were driving in opposite directions on Alabama 25 on Sunday when one of the vehicles crossed the centre line, colliding with the other.