Laval police were out on Wednesday morning to teach motorists about the impacts of speeding.
In an effort to scare people into slowing down, the parking lot of the Chomedey Club Entrepot on Curé-Labelle Boulevard, was turned into a mock car accident.
Officers simulated a high-velocity crash and then pulled over speeding drivers to bring them to the scene.
Firefighters were there with hydraulic rescue tools, or the jaws of life, prying doors open of a car with a smashed windshield and a battered roof.
There was even a real-life trauma victim there to speak with the speeding motorists as a means of prevention.
Nicholas Terresco, a victim of a motorcycle crash caused by speeding, was there to share his story. The crash left him with a brain injury and took away his ability to walk.
Terresco said it was a day that changed his life, but he hopes others can learn from his mistake.
“When they hear me tell them that, they think, ‘Oh, it can happen to me too.'”
The location Laval police chose for the initiative is mixed in terms of the types of people sharing the street at once.
“On Curé-Labelle there are a lot of cars, a lot of pedestrians and a lot of bikes”, Jean-Francois Rousselle, a traffic inspector for Laval police, said.
READ MORE: Mock drunk driving crash scares students straight at Royal West Academy
The initiative created in partnership with the fire department of Laval, Urgences-santé, Quebec Association for people with traumatic brain injury and the Quebec automobile insurance board (SAAQ) and has become a annual event.
“You definitely don’t want to be in a situation like this,” one driver who was pulled over said.
“It makes you think twice when you get behind the wheel of a car, what the repercussions can be.”
In Quebec, the cause of injury and death following a motor-vehicle collision is most often related to speed, Laval police wrote in a press release.
“It’s not fiction, it can happen,” Rousselle said. “That is the message.”