A man whose knees were destroyed in a crash in Langley three years ago has been awarded $3 million, and a resident of Zero Ave. said his case is just one of many to happen on the road.

The victim of a car accident on Zero Ave. will receive millions of dollars in what is believed to be record settlement.

Richard MacNevin, a 54-year-old from Delta, has been awarded $3 million by a B.C. Supreme Court jury for the serious knee injuries he suffered in a head-on car crash three years ago.

The $2.975 million award included $2 million for MacNevin's pain and suffering.

MacNevin was on his way to work on Jan. 11, 2002, when he was hit by a truck that crossed a double yellow line and tried to pass three vehicles on Zero Ave.

The truck driver got an $85 traffic ticket for speeding.

MacNevin now needs knee replacement surgeries every five years for the rest of his life, said his lawyer, Joseph Prodor.

Although MacNevin is in a relatively small amount of pain, "all the doctors agree this is the least amount of pain he will suffer," Prodor said, adding that MacNevin will likely be unable to work as he gets older.

Prodor believes that the eight-person civil jury may have been impressed by MacNevin's work ethic.

The crash victim, who services water bombers for Cascade Aerospace, returned to his job on June 1, 2002, and within four months was working five days a week. However, pain forces him to spend a fair portion of each shift lying down in the company's infirmary.

Prodor said he searched court records and did not find any awards for damages as high as MacNevin's in a case that didn't involve a catastrophic head injury, paraplegia, or quadriplegia.

He expects that ICBC, which defended the truck driver, will likely appeal the jury's decision.

MacNevin's accident is "eerily similar" to one that occurred on Saturday, Jan. 15 of this year, said Zero Ave. resident Trudy Handel, when a pickup truck crossed into the path of an oncoming car, killing a man from Las Vegas.

A few days earlier, on Jan. 6, charges of unsafe passing and driving too fast for road conditions were laid against the driver of a 1989 Volkswagen Jetta, after it hit an oncoming car on Zero Ave.

"On a daily basis, we see cars on Zero Ave. pulling out and passing multiple cars - sometimes five or six at a time," said Handel. "They are speeding, and they have no qualms at all about passing on double solid lines."

"This is not an occasional thing. It happens every single day, particularly in rush hour down here," she said.

- with files from The Province

Our View: Financial terms

$3,000,000 for a couple of knees! Perhaps that will get people thinking about speed limits on Zero Ave.

But probably not. People who roar along Zero Ave. aren't likely thinking about what they're doing - and certainly they're not thinking about what they're doing while they're pulling out to pass a whole row of vehicles heading up a blind hill.

Witnesses declare that sort of thing happens on Zero Ave. quite regularly. And there have been plenty of accidents, some of them merely serious, others fatal, that bear out their reports.

That kind of thoughtlessness - stupidity, really - isn't restricted to Zero Ave., of course. But the numbers do seem to indicate that it happens there a lot.

Whether or not the speed tables being installed on Zero Ave. - an effort by Township Council to convince more motorists to behave themselves - have the desired effect of making drivers think, the B.C. Supreme Court's award of $3,000,000 to a 54-year-old Delta man who was injured on Zero Ave. three years ago should give everyone with a pocketbook pause for thought.

Without doubt, a significant part of the problem of speeding drivers goes back to the Lower Mainland's clogged and substandard road system. Seriously, people wouldn't be going so far out of their way to make up time by roaring along Zero Ave., if they could move along at a decent pace on freeway routes that are supposedly designed for quick and straightforward vehicle transit.

Strictly in financial terms, think of how much road work could be done for the price of each of Mr. MacNevin's knees. Add in the cost of all the other knees, legs, backs, necks, and lives that have been broken as result of driver aggravation brought on by an inadequate system of getting people from here to there.

People shouldn't speed on Zero Ave. or anywhere else.

But the roads should be better.

It would pay to improve the roads before the courts address the damage.

And that's just strictly in financial terms.

- B.G.