You can set your clock by Mavis Taillieu.
Almost every day of the spring legislative session the MLA for Morris stands up in house and tables another petition calling for major upgrades to the seven-kilometre stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway that runs through Headingley.
That petition has been signed by hundreds of Headingley residents and continues to circulate through the quickly growing bedroom community just west of Winnipeg.
Taillieu and the petition call for the province to divide the east- and west-bound lanes completely to eliminate the chance of a repeat of the horrific Oct. 12, 2007 crash that killed a husband and wife and a 22-year-old man.
"There has to be some way to upgrade the safety right now," said Taillieu, whose husband Wilf is the reeve of Headingley. "To take the attitude you can't do anything is wrong."
What's prompting Taillieu on this daily crusade is that the number of cars and big trucks using the highway is increasing each month.
That's due to more residential and commercial development between the west Perimeter Highway and Headingley, including a new housing development and the opening of a new truck stop, the third one along the strip.
Taillieu said the Doer government is dragging its heels in fixing up the highway when federal infrastructure money is available.
"There's a lot of money coming in where they could prioritize this project," she said.
The petition was started shortly after Wayne Adair, 41, Serena Adair, 37, and Garreth McDonald, 22, were killed after McDonald's east-bound car side-swiped a taxi, then crossed the highway into oncoming traffic and hit the Adairs' Cadillac SUV, which burst into flames. The crash happened three kilometres west of the Perimeter Highway where there is no median separating the east- and west-bound lanes.
McDonald was impaired and was driving twice the 70 km/h speed limit.
At the time of the crash, RCMP said there had been 101 collisions in less than two years on the same stretch of highway. Since then, RCMP have recorded 30 collisions from minor fender-benders to the more serious, but none of them fatal.
The province and the Rural Municipality of Headingley have slowly improved the road by installing traffic lights at three intersections and slowly buying up land to build service roads to better control traffic leaving and entering the highway. Turning lanes at some intersections have also been added.
Infrastructure Minister Ron Lemieux said more improvements will be made as more land becomes available to add access and service roads.
"As minister I don't need petitions to tell me how important this is," he said.
He said the province will add "rumble strips" down the centre of a portion of the highway this summer. Rumble strips are grooves or rows of raised pavement markers placed perpendicular to the direction of traffic to alert inattentive drivers. As a vehicle passes over the rumble strips, noise and vibration produced in the tires alerts drivers they are approaching a hazard.
Cpl. Larry Dalman of Headingley RCMP traffic services said improvements to the highway have made it safer for drivers, but he cautions roads are not the cause of the majority of most crashes.
"People can blame roads all they want," he said. "It's the driver. It's the drivers who are dangerous."
He warns as summer traffic increases on the Trans-Canada, all drivers should pay attention to the speedometer and what other motorists are doing.
"Just because it's a 70-kilometre zone doesn't mean everyone drives 70," he said.
bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca
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