Nicous D’Andre Spring may well have died because the papers authorizing his discharge from Bordeaux were held up because it was Christmas Eve and certain office workers were away or had left early. The banality of fate, sometimes.
Updates from January, 2023 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Protests were held in Montreal and in other Quebec towns Tuesday morning in support of better pedestrian safety. A report released Monday says pedestrian injuries are on the rise (and, like the car theft piece linked below, La Presse starts with the implication that the pandemic is over).
carswell
On Sunday evening, I took the metro from UdeM station to Berri-UQAM. For most of the ride, I was the only mask-wearer I saw. Finally caught a glimpse of a masked middle-aged woman waiting on the blue line platform at Jean-Talon and a couple of elderly women wearing masks got on the train at Rosemont or Laurier. Conclusion: the pandemic isn’t over but most of the populace is over it.
Daniel
I remember reading a piece in 2020 about how the pandemic would end. The takeaway was that there would be a societal end to the pandemic and a medical end and they wouldn’t necessarily coincide. Prescient!
Joey
La Presse isn’t so much announcing that the pandemic is over and done with, but that the rush-hour calm (esp. around schools) associated with the early stage of the pandemic is, most definitely, long gone (“L’accalmie de la pandémie maintenant passée…”). And while commuting is probably below pre-pandemic levels, rush hour is full of cars, and kids haven’t faced an extended school-from-home period for years.
CE
Instead of saying that the pandemic is “over” we should be saying that the restrictions have been lifted, which I think is what the media is getting at when they say that. We’ve come to associate the Covid pandemic with the restrictions more than the illness itself. We’re constantly in the middle of many pandemics; there’s a flu pandemic every year, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has been ongoing since the 80s. Because there are no society-wide restrictions related to these pandemics, we don’t think of them as such. The Covid pandemic may never end (like the flu) but it’s going to take a pretty bad mutation for us to go back feeling like we’re “in a pandemic” again.
Tee Owe
@CE + 1 : I was struggling to compose a response that said the same, now i don’t have to.
Blork
(Off topic of pedestrian safety, but we’re on a roll here.)
This video from Australia is interesting. Sounds like they’re in pretty much the same boat as we are. As the first panelist says “the strategy is to let it run pretty much unfettered in the wider population while trying to protect those who are deemed vulnerable.” (He is not promoting this as a good strategy.)
The takeaways from the discussion are similar to what anyone paying attention has been saying for a while. The way out is not to ignore it, but to (a) keep up with vaccination, (b) keep masking in higher-risk environments even if it isn’t required by law, and (c) renovate our built environments to place a strong emphasis on ventilation.
Until we all get on board with all three of those things, we’ll be stuck in the rut we’ve been in for the past three years.
Video is 12:28 duration and is hosted on Facebook but no logins are needed. It’s from an Australian TV news show.
bumper carz
Seems like drivers are more dangerous than ever. Less traffic in the way, and lots of drivers flying high on the combination of anti-depressants and rapid social decline. I hope more driving restrictions will be introduced.
mare
During the early years of the pandemic a lot of people bought cars because they didn’t want air with other people. And now they’re used to having a car and since they already pay for it they continue using it. So more cars, not less.
I was in a car with a stranger from Terrebonne today, and he ignored so many city traffic rules, and was complaining about all the traffic lights and that people were sleeping behind the wheel (they were waiting for pedestrians). He took small side streets because Google told him it was 1 minute faster. It was faster, also because he drove 60 through residential streets. It was scary as fuck but an eye opener.
Cars and driving do strange things to people. To me too, and I finally sold my car today. To him. He’s a scrapper, so it really is one car less on the road in my neighbourhood.Ian
qatzi, you seem to have a funny notion of what anti-depressants do… if you’re still catching a buzz after the first month or so you should get your prescription adjusted because it sounds like you’re having a reaction.
Kate
mare, that’s so true. Crossing the street, a car stops for you, and the ones behind it start honking. And what it feels like is “Stop being such a pussy! Knock her down and get out of the way!”
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Kate
There has been what La Presse calls an explosion of car thefts since what it also calls the end of the pandemic. This is far from the first time it’s reported that most vehicles stolen here are either shipped overseas or dismantled for parts.
Kevin
I’ve read multiple articles over the past two months of car thieves from Montreal being arrested in Ottawa and Toronto in search of new vehicles.
In almost every case the thieves are targetting vehicles (especially the Dodge Ram) with electronic key fobs because they’re easily hacked if the owner parks in their driveway and leaves their keychain within a few metres of the front door.
Ephraim
The car manufacturers don’t have an interest in stopping this, as it creates an need for new cars. The insurance companies don’t have an interest as it creates a need for insurance. Government has to intervene. That is how the last round of changes to cars were made, including the habit of not putting a keyhole on the passenger side… when the British government put in new laws requiring that more parts be engraved.
What we need now is 128 bit to 256 bit encryption between the key and the electronics in the car. And in cars that have cellular connections for navigation, a kill switch by VIN that manufacturers are required to install.
Oh… and maybe a few police setting up traps
Ephraim
To fix car thefts, we need federal laws… because neither the car manufacturers nor the insurance companies have an interest in stopping car theft. The last changes were set in motion by the British government.
Cars need to have 128-Bit to 256-Bit encryption from the key to the computer, so the computer won’t work if you don’t have the electronic key. Need to over-ride? You should need to put in a 128-Bit key. For example (H+MbQeThWmZq4t7… you don’t have the key, you have to type that in, then you have a challenge, it gives you a phone number and a key number. You call the manufacturer, they validate your information, they take the key number from the screen, you type in the 6 digit key and the car starts. It should be THAT complicated to start a car without a key
And we could do what cities like YVR do… bait cars
Orr
Le Soleil recently reported that a Trois-Rivières man has found his stolen F-150.
Unfortunately, it was found in Cameroon.
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Kate
Curious that CTV reports two arson attacks near Concordia downtown, but it takes TVA to specify that both attacks were on bars. Nobody was hurt and there have been no arrests.
Ian 21:06 on 2023-01-24 Permalink
The banality of evil, more like. “I WAS JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS” energy here, Hannah Arendt is rolling in her grave.
Kate 22:34 on 2023-01-24 Permalink
I didn’t think of it quite that way. None of those admin people could have guessed that by taking half a day off they were condemning a man to death.
Ephraim 23:00 on 2023-01-24 Permalink
And not caring enough that someone got home for Christmas?
John B 23:14 on 2023-01-24 Permalink
I feel like if there are court hearings that could affect someone’s right to freedom on a day, the organizations responsible for pushing the paper to unlocking the doors have a responsibility to make sure someone is working to push the paper.
An individual employee should not be able to condemn someone to several more days in prison by simply taking the afternoon off. Either the employee must be working, or the organization must make sure someone else can cover.
Kate 10:42 on 2023-01-25 Permalink
True. I imagine working in the office of a prison engenders a certain callousness in attitude.
steph 12:10 on 2023-01-25 Permalink
I’m going to defend the workers, they probably have a delay accorded to them to process things. WIth an audience in front of the judge that ends friday at 16h08, these things take time to process. Court agents have paper work to send to the prison, prison staff have to process that paperwork for a release. Zero chance (even with the day staff not taking the afternoon off) is that getting done before Monday. This is a sad reality of the delays in our justice & prison system.
It’s not much different from the TV trope of spending the weekend in jail until you see the judge on monday.
Joey 14:06 on 2023-01-25 Permalink
He died because they killed him, not because his release was delayed.
Kate 14:26 on 2023-01-25 Permalink
True, but had he been released as ordered, he would not have been killed. Massive consequence from an oversight, but the very fact that releasing a man in time for Christmas was not considered important enough to expedite tells you something about their attitudes.
Ian 22:42 on 2023-01-25 Permalink
Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that the people in charge of the release and the people that killed him are unrelated.
This is what “systemic” means.