On Saturday, November 30th, 2013 at 07:17 p.m. PST the Santa Clarita Valley Station, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department posted the following:

Sheriff's deputies … responded to a report of a traffic collision at approximately 3:30PM in the 28300 block of Rye Canyon Loop, Valencia, on Saturday, November 30, 2013.
When they arrived, deputies found the vehicle engulfed in flames. The Los Angeles County Fire Department responded, extinguished the fire and subsequently located two victims inside the vehicle. The victims were pronounced dead at the scene.

Impaired driving is one of the oldest criminal code offences relating to operating a motor vehicle, but the social stigma that now attaches to such behaviour is a relatively recent development. It may be hard to believe that announcing ‘one for the road’ was once considered a clever remark.

When Road Rules first wrote about a new type of auto insurance based on personalized rates for customers willing to allow their insurer to monitor their driving using telematic devices, its potential to inspire widespread safer driving with significant discount rewards seemed an unassailable ‘win-win.’ Clearly it was a novel carrot-versus-stick approach with little or no downside.

A recent episode of a documentary television series called Parts Unknown showed a visit to Detroit, Michigan that included a tour of the Packard Automotive Plant. Allan Hill, a guide for the tour, reported that he had lived there by himself for the past seven years finding it “as peaceful as the north woods.”

A year ago, Road Rules described Canada’s road safety plan to 2015 as inviting “all the various jurisdictions with their respective responsibilities for highway safety … to develop their own plans … for ensuring that road fatalities and serious injuries continue … to trend downwards.” Recently, in August 2013, British Columbia responded with its own Road Safety Strategy for 2015 and Beyond at http://www.pssg.gov.bc.ca/osmv/shareddocs/RoadSafetyStrategy.pdf.