Speed Kills

On Sunday evening Kouchi Matsumoto, 70, a former Carleton University chemistry professor died. In a car accident, as he was driving his Hyundai on Woodroffe Avenue. The car that plowed into Mr. Matsumoto's vehicle was a BMW, westbound on the Highway 417 off-ramp. Speeding. The 28-year-old driver lost control. Neither the BMW's driver nor his 22 year-old-passenger was hurt.

The BMW struck a curb, crossed two southbound lanes and leaped over the median. And then it hit Mr. Matsumoto's car. A 66-year-old woman seated on Mr. Matsumoto's car's passenger seat suffered serious chest, abdominal and hand injuries. She is now in stable condition in hospital, while Mr. Matsumoto was pronounced dead at the scene.

Mr. Matsumoto, a resident of Kanata, in west-end Ottawa, studied chemistry at Carleton University in 1967. He returned to Japan, his native country, and lived there, but was concerned about the never-ending cycle of earthquakes, and the use of nuclear power in a country so geologically unstable, certain that it was a poor mix. "You cannot negotiate with nature", he once said.

In 1983 he returned to Ottawa, and took up a teaching position in chemistry at Carleton University. And he has been a resident of Ottawa ever since. When he was two years of age he and his family lived in Hiroshima. His mother was killed and his family home destroyed in 1945 when his city was bombed along with Nagasaki, by American Atomic bombs, just before the end of the Second World War.

Police have said that alcohol did not factor into the crash that killed Mr. Matsumoto. But speed most certainly is held to have contributed to the collision. Police are as yet uncertain whether charges would be laid. Although the circumstances certainly do lend themselves to the laying of charges.