I think most of us can agree that twinning major highways in Nova Scotia, especially the 103, is beneficial. If you disagree you’re either a closed-minded moron or you’re dismissing their worth as a ruse to hide your aversion to any associated price tag, which I will get to later. Case and point: the Cobequid Pass. There were close to 50 deaths in the 10 years prior to its twinning vs. 3 in the 19 years after construction. This lower death rate is not a coincidence. And then you had the ill-informed audacity to say that twinning “does not work” without any credible evidence to back up your sorry excuse for an argument. Sure there will still be accidents on twinned highways but most of them are single car rollovers. Fatalities and critical injuries are what matters. Yes, distracted driving and human error are usually the cause of accidents but highway design is also a contributing factor in the case of head on collisions. If two cars driving 100 KPH collide with each other, the impact speed is doubled and you’re not going to walk away from it. You don’t need to be Isaac Newton to understand this. There is no disputing that twinning almost nullifies the occurrence of head on collisions and significantly decreases fatalities. If there is a Speedy Gonzales on the road, I would feel much better about him or her going by me than towards me. We can toughen laws and educate people until we are blue in the face but there will ALWAYS be people who choose to drive while impaired or distracted and just plain make stupid decisions. Not to mention the fact that even if you have adjusted your driving for adverse weather conditions, accidents can still happen and there is not a lot of room for error on an undivided highway. This utopian world you’re dreaming of where we only have law abiding, attentive drivers on the road will NEVER exist. You know what else will always be a reality? A lot of things aren’t free! Highway twinning costs BILLIONS of dollars and this penniless province just doesn’t have that lying around. It has to come from either increased taxes or tolls. You have no business throwing out the poor card while you buy Starbucks (or Roll up the Rims), lottery tickets, smoke cigarettes or pay interest on your credit card. If you do any of these things and complain about tolls, you’re the epitome of a hypocrite. If paying $8.00 (maximum) per round trip is really going to put you in the hole, you need to get your shit together. There are likely some adjustments you can make to your fiscal mismanagement to allow for tolls in your budget. If there aren’t, you probably shouldn’t be driving at all because that means you’re not in a position to pay for any unexpected car bills. As for me, I’m more than happy to spend money on a toll for a well-maintained highway that is safer to drive on (and I just might sip on a Starbucks while I’m doing it!) because I see the value in them. I don’t want to die because a car is coming towards me due to driver error or circumstances that may be out of their control. Your cheap ass can always take the back road while you risk beating your car to pieces and ending up getting a nasty car bill you can’t afford. —The Toll Troll