[focusracer]

Dude, Umm. The van had the bench seats that came with the vehicle removed and replaced with wooden benches. Said benches were not attached to the vehicle in any way, shape or form. No seatbelts were in the said vehicle for any of the farm workers to wear.

Now, I understand you're not from the area this happened in so I'll inform you of some info that most likely doesn't reach the news nationwide. The farmers that transport their workers on this way are generally of Indian (India not First Nations) decent. They buy vans that are on their last legs, that should generally be found unsafe to be on the roads. They gut them of the seats that are in them because generally they are useless anyway unless they are just a panel van then they don't need to get rid of the seats. They put wooden benches in, if they're lucky, or the people sit on the floor. They hire immigrant workers from India, Pakistan etc. who on paper are paid, say for argument sake, $10/hr. But really they get about 3 or 4 dollars an hour. After the season is over, they are laid off, they've work enough hours and have "paid" enough to be able to go on EI until the next season starts. The vans get registered generally for the 3-4 months of the season as farm vehicles, so no inspection or emissions testing are done for the short period that they are being insured for. Then are taken off the road, uninsured for a time, "sold" to their brother at another farm, and reregistered and insured for the next season.

There are probably 3-4 bad crashes due to unqualified drivers in control of these vehicles. Every year, usually in the summer, there are at least a 1/2 dozen deaths plus many serious injuries due to these conditions.

So, after my little history lesson for you guys to inform you of how the situation of this crash (I refuse to call this an accident) I'll tell you this.

I know quite a few farmers, I know how toough the situation is for them, that is why I prefer to buy my fresh fruit and vegetables from the farmers markets, not the grocery stores that rape and pillage the farmers who grow said produce for us to eat and be healthy with. Just like I buy my meat straight from the farmers who have butcher shops and meat markets ont their land. I don't know how Ontario is for this type of availability but there are quite a few out here that do this.

So FFS don't tell me to have respect for farmers dammit. I respect farmers a lot. I worked on some farms when I was a teenager. I used to go to Saskatchewan and Manitoba to help with harvest every year. My parents would arrange with the school for me to start 2 weeks late.

However, I do not respect these farmers who run their farms like sweatshops, don't pay their workers properly, don't provide proper water or bathroom access (most just have a bucket to s*** in and a trough that may or may not have clean water in it) and put them in harms way transporting them to the fields.

The only person in that van this morning to have a seatbelt on was the driver. How do I know this you ask? Because a friend of mine's dad was a paramedic on scene, I was talking to him a couple hours ago about it. Every person was injured in one way or another because of everyone flying around and at least 2 were thrown from the vehicle. What probably won't make it to the news is that one of the people thrown from the vehicle was hit by a car doing highway speeds.

Imagine that, cruising down the highway on your way to work listening to the comedy of the morning radio show sipping your cup of coffee and WHAM you've got a turban for a hood ornament because the poor bastard flew out out of a farm van that didn't provide him a seatbelt.