Sask. woman urges drivers to ditch phones in wake of crash

A Saskatchewan woman is using a close call to try and convince drivers to put down their phones.

Jenn Lange said she was pulled over Sunday evening on the shoulder of Highway 16 near Radisson, waiting to make a turn when a car .

She told 650 CKOM’s David Kirton that a car drifted into the shoulder, striking her Jeep from behind before flipping onto its roof.

Shaken, but unhurt, she said she and her sister rushed over to the car to help the driver of the flipped vehicle, who she later learned was a 25-year-old man.

“When we went to the car, it was absolute chaos. He had shoes down the highway. Everything that was in his car was scattered everywhere. All of his windows were broken out, and yet, this young man was pulled out of the car holding his cellphone in his hand,” Lange said.

Lange said the discovery led her to conclude that the man had been on his phone at the time of the crash.

“There was a bit of anger in that moment when we realized that there’s no way he could have had time to find his cellphone in the maybe 20 seconds it took us to get down the highway to his car and pull him out,” she said..

Lange said the man seemed disoriented after the crash.

“And the first thing he wanted to do when he was out of the car was get on the phone and text.” she said.

Lange said she was left a bit sore after the crash, but was otherwise okay. In a Facebook post, she wrote that the driver of the car was taken away from the scene on a backboard after emergency workers arrived.

Counting herself lucky to have come away alive and unhurt, Lange said she hoped sharing her story would help change attitudes around distracted driving.

“Watch the road. Put your phone down. It’s just not that important to answer that text message or that phone call.”

An officer from the Martensville RCMP detachment said Wednesday that the driver of the car was charged with driving unaccompanied while only having a learner’s licence and driving without due care and attention.