Father’s Day this year will be difficult for Daniel Herard because he won’t be able to spend it with his son.
In April, while riding his bicycle near his home in Chelmsford, 16-year-old Patrick Herard was killed by a speeding teenage motorist. Police say the driver was engaged in a race.
“People that race will still be having breakfast with their dads, and I’ll be at the cemetery,” he said.
Herard, an RCMP officer, thinks a new law proposed last week by the federal government that makes punishments harsher for those caught street racing might prevent similar tragedies.
“I think it’s an excellent first step towards making people realize that racing is deadly. It’s very, very dangerous. It’s not a game,” he said.
“I think there’s an attitude not only here but in Toronto that racing is considered a hobby and a sport. The streets are definitely not the place to do it.”
In cases where street racing is involved, those convicted of dangerous driving causing bodily harm would spend 14 years in prison, as opposed to 10.
The penalty for dangerous driving causing death would be raised from 14 years to lifetime imprisonment, and the penalty for criminal negligence causing death would be raised from 10 years to 14 years.
Those convicted more than once of street racing causing bodily harm will receive two-year licence suspensions. Those with repeat convictions of racing causing death will have their licences revoked permanently.
The new law should be paired with education programs about street racing, said Herard.
He plans to collaborate with project ERASE, a coalition of police services that aims to stamp out street racing, to produce a video about the subject. The Greater Sudbury Police Service has recently joined ERASE.
“I hope to (speak on the video). My wife would like to get on too, and Patrick’s best friend, who was also riding a bicycle with him that night, would like to be on (the video). We’ll get perspectives not just from parents, but from his teenage friends.”
Movies and video games that glorify street racing are part of the problem, said Herard.
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, a movie about the underground world of Japanese drift racing, was released in theatres on Friday.
“All of this has an impact, especially on kids. They think these video games and movies are real life, and they don’t realize there’s live people on streets, and there’s people walking and bicycling. Nobody gets hurt in the movies.”
The last two months have been tough for the Herard family.
“It’s been very, very difficult. My wife is finding it especially difficult. She had a very, very close relationship with Patrick,” he said.
“I was raised here in Sudbury, and I worked in Montreal for 20 years. We came back last year to be with family, and we lost part of ours.”
The Greater Sudbury Police Service’s head traffic cop, Sgt. Gary Lavoie, said the city’s street racing problem isn’t as bad as Toronto’s, but they receive complaints on a “regular basis.”
Patrick Herard is the second person to be killed in Greater Sudbury because of street racing in three years.
“The other one was an incident on Paris St. in May of 2003. There were two vehicles going southbound by St. Joseph’s Health Centre, and one of the individuals lost control of his vehicle,” said Lavoie.
“The car rolled, and he was ejected from the vehicle and killed. Based on the skid marks that were left on the roadway, it was determined that the vehicles were travelling at 112 km/h in a 40 km/h zone.”
Lavoie is hopeful stricter penalties for street racers will deter the activity. Greater Sudbury police are doing everything they can to crack down on street racing, he said.
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