DriveSmartBC

I'm one of those odd drivers who tries their best to drive at or below the posted speed limit. I include the word below here as sometimes there is a need to slow down to less than the posted speed limit for safety reasons. This often has consequences for me when I have to share the road with other drivers who do not subscribe to my philosophy on road safety. A good example of this is looking in my rear view mirror and finding the Volvo logo on the grille of a heavy transport truck following me closely enough that I could count the bugs stuck to it.

It’s very interesting that some new drivers to BC can easily obtain a driver license with no written test on BC traffic laws and no road test to demonstrate competency .

Road safety should not be based on political agreements.

While many of the 12 Countries that are exempt from testing, have lower vehicle Fatality rates, Some countries have triple the Canadian average fatality rates.

Erin Couldwell was operating his bicycle at the exit of a parking lot onto a lane near the Victoria Police Department headquarters just before 7:00 am on September 25, 2014. His bicycle had neither lights nor reflectors. Constable Horonowitsch had just commenced his dayshift and was approaching the parking lot exit in the lane driving a marked police vehicle with it's normal vehicle lighting on.

Arrest someone, fight with them, throw them in jail and see them through to penalty in criminal court seems to be business as usual for the police, but write someone a traffic ticket and it's like you've called their mother a bad name. Very few drivers hang their heads, apologize for their mistake and said hand over my ticket, I'll do better next time. Those people do exist and probably receive the benefit of a doubt more often but those that don't wind up asking me for dispute advice.

Question: Last week I received my first ticket in 41 years of driving. I had recently started driving taxi part time in Nanaimo. At the end of a 9 hour shift I dropped the taxi off and got into my own car. Five minutes later I went through a school zone without slowing down, having missed the school zone sign.

I sat in court to see what it is like in traffic court as I have never been to one before. I noticed that on many occasions, the officer would take the defendants outside of the courtroom to speak to them about their plea to the court. 

The 5 recent fatalities on Comox valley roads indicate that the fatal accident rate here, is about 3 times the BC average,in the past 5 months  I hope that someone is paying attention to the causes of these preventable deaths.

This has been an interesting week for road safety. The Provincial Health Officer has released a report, Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Reducing the Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes on Health and Well-being in BC, that suggests lower speed limits in residential areas and the return of automated speed enforcement as a means of reducing injury and death on our roads. Tom Fletcher is the legislative reporter for the Black Press in Victoria. He quotes Minister Todd Stone's response to the report:

"We believe there are more effective technologies that can be employed, and frankly a better way to utilize precious police resources than to resurrect what was largely a failed photo radar program that was nothing more than a tax grab for British Columbians,"

Translink Buses

We are asked to give buses a break but the problem is that when they are parked at the curb the drivers have their 4 way flashers on. Unfortunately these 4 way flashers use the same lights as the turn signals. If there is more than one bus in the line when the driver switches from 4 way to turn signal  there is no way to tell what you are seeing.

A recent poll by Insights West found that 50% of Canadians feel that drivers in their city or town are worse than they were five years ago. The two top groups of bad drivers identified by three of every five of us were youth and seniors. To top it off, most of us have witnessed dangerous and illegal behaviour on our roads in the past month. Wow! Time to have a look at ourselves in the rear view mirror.