an ounce of prevention...

When I was in grade 12 I worked part time at a full-serve gas station in Langley. I was 17 years old and I usually worked the 4 to 11 pm shift by myself, without benefit of a cage, cameras or an alarm. Looking back I don't think that I ever really gave my safety a second thought but part of the reason may have been that I was 17. That was 20 years ago and while 20 years may not be that significant in the grand scheme of things, it was a different world than the one we live in today.

After I finished high school I got a job working the car wash at a 24 hour self-serve station. There was no such thing as a "touchless" car wash back then and my job was to scrub the tires, rocker panels and bumpers before guiding the driver into the wash. I also had to go into the bowels of the carwash to retrieve any mirrors, antenna's or other car appendages that it may have consumed. I also covered shifts in the gas bar from time to time, often over the graveyard shift. When I first started the job there were no alarms, cameras and no thought to securing the attendant in a cage even at night, until one night the station was robbed. Thankfully I wasn't working, but shortly after that incident we installed a button that allowed the attendant to unlock the door and two panic buttons, one under the counter and the other was worn on a chain around the attendants neck. This was only a year after I had worked at the full-serve but already the world had become a different place than it was the year before.

A lot has changed since my days pumping gas (not including the price per liter)... there are very few completely full-serve stations left and there is no longer the choice between leaded and unleaded. Back then pay at the pump meant that you passed your cash or a credit card through your window to the guy who pumped the gas and if you paid by credit card you signed your name and the paranoid people asked for all of the carbons. There was no option to use debit. The world has changed.

I realize that change doesn't always come easy to all of us, none-the-less I can't help but be a just a little concerned with a few of the letters I've read in this weeks Vancouver Province. It troubles me how little compassion we can show towards the safety of others when this safety is measured against our own convenience. As most of you are probably aware on Friday the 1st of February "Grants Law" came into affect requiring British Columbians to prepay for gasoline purchases and for station owners to introduce measures to protect attendants working alone. This law was introduced in response to the death of Grant DePatie who was tragically killed when he tried to stop (quite mistakenly) a gas and dash at the station where he was working.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...

...or so the old saying goes, but in response to Grants Law Province readers said "Initiatives like Grants Law rarely accomplish their objectives and are usually counterproductive", and "The net effect of Grants Law will be to make gas stations more dangerous for all of us." According to one letter writer "Grants Law is an over reaction to a tragic incident that happened once and never happened again."

If this is the path that our "enlightened" society is choosing to follow somebody please stop the world so I can get off!

Of course Grants Law is not going to stop all thefts from gas stations, nor is it going to stop all gas thieves, especially as the price of fuel rises. But if this law prevents just one theft, if it deters just one person from attempting another gas and run, if it makes just one gas station attendant feel safer while doing their job...doesn't that make it a worthwhile exercise and a reasonable strategy at making our community safer? Does anyone really believe that potential gas thieves will now be lurking behind pumps in well lit stations waiting to hijack gas consumers now that they can't steal the gas from the pumps themselves? Really?

Am I the only person bothered by this?

In the same paper I see a readers response to fire fighter union boss Rod MacDonald's decsion to ignore new rules giving emergency services the choice to turn sirens off when responding to incidents late at night. This despite the concern of downtown residents including Sam Sullivan over the disruption and loss of sleep caused by the excessive noise of "2 fire trucks, a rescue vehicle, a cop car or 2 and an ambulance" for each event. In his letter the writer states that "we are woken every night by sirens from trucks often going 3 blocks to a fender bender..." I'm sure that the writers opinion would change if it was him pinned helpless behind his steering wheel, the smell of gasoline rising around him...

I don't pump gas for other people anymore, for the past 8 years I have been a safety officer, emergency planner and risk manager so my opinions here may be slightly biased in one direction but still I can't help but be disturbed when it appears to me that personal comfort and convenience are held in higher regard than just one life...taken as a result of "one tragic incident that happened once and never happened again."

Until it happens again!