- MONTREAL - Snowmobilers in Quebec have been zipping along at high speeds
and riding on lakes where the ice isn't thick enough to support them.
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- They've also been crossing roadways,
travelling at night over unfamiliar trails and drinking enough booze to
take the edge off driver reaction time.
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- It's costing some of them their lives.
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- "In terms of driving, people don't
pay enough attention," says Claude Goyette, who runs a snowmobile
parts shop.
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- In fact, all kinds of factors could be
behind the isolated tragedies that have given Quebec a grim total of 36
snowmobile deaths this winter, tying a record set in 1992-93.
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- The rest of Canada, however, has seen
a decline in the number of such fatalities.
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- Goyette, of Montreal, figures the basic
problem is simply inexperience.
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- "Often a person buys his first snowmobile
when he's 20, 25 years old. The machine is too powerful for his experience.
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- "It should be like with motorcycles.
You start with a smaller motor, with fewer cylinders," said Goyette,
42, who's been too busy in recent years to do much snowmobiling, though
she says she's done a lot in the past.
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- D'Arcy Chenier of the Canadian Council
of Snowmobile Organizations says a certain type is behind many of the accidents.
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- Safety campaigns are aimed at 18- to
24-year-old men speeding at night.
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- "In 72 per cent of the fatalities,
alcohol is involved," said Chenier, marketing manager of the Barrie,
Ont.-based council.
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- "That 18-to-34 group is still the
problem. We're trying to get into their brain but we're not very successful,"
he said.
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- "The RCMP has the same problem with
car driving. The same guy gets nailed for drunk driving over and over."
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- Chenier said Quebec is the only province
where the fatality rate is so high. Rates in other provinces have risen
only slightly in the last five years despite the growth in the number of
snowmobilers.
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- Quebec, where the vehicles are called
motoneiges, was well into a bad winter for fatalities when chief coroner
Pierre Morin issued a statistical analysis last January.
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- Morin noted that Quebec had a total of
304 snowmobile deaths in the 12 winters from 1986-87 to 1997-98.
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- On average, nine out of 10 victims were
men. Fifty-nine per cent of the fatalities occurred in darkness.
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- The most frequent accident cause -- 40
per cent -- was losing control of the vehicle or hitting an obstacle. The
deadliest months were January and February.
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- Snowmobiles have always been big in Quebec,
home province of J. Armand Bombardier (1907-1964), the Ski-Doo's inventor.
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- An estimated 17 per cent of Quebecers
have used the machines.
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- Pascal Lepore, a Bombardier spokesman,
is puzzled about why Quebec has had so many snowmobile deaths.
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- "The way they're happening right
now is mind-boggling.
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- "It's not that the vehicle is too
powerful. I think it's a question of the way it's used. Maybe they're freak
accidents."
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- Lepore said two or three recent Quebec
deaths involved passengers. "We've never seen that before," he
said.
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- The International Snowmobile Manufacturers
Association is trying to find a solution to the safety problem.
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- At Bombardier, Lepore said, "We
do try to educate people. With every vehicle we deliver, we include a safety
video.
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- "Our message is very strong in the
videos: It's to be conscious of what you're doing with those vehicles."
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- One point is don't go on ice without
first determining its thickness.Ten of those who died this winter in Quebec
snowmobile accidents drowned.
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