Behaviour

This 60 question test from the folks at Psychology Today magazine will present you with your driving strengths and weaknesses when you complete it. The site suggests that it takes 20 minutes to complete, but I managed to get through it in about 10 minutes without rushing. Answer honestly and see how you rate as a safe or risky driver.

A lot can happen in just the 23 seconds of this video contributed by Orang Gila, taken in Maple Ridge, just past the Safeway at Dewdney Trunk Road. Keep an eye out for the pedestrian on the right sidewalk mid-block who is clearly dithering about crossing the street and is having difficulty finding a large enough gap in the four lanes of traffic that she must cross on the busy street.

I'm sure that you have heard by now that the BC government has announced penalty points to go with a violation ticket for talking on a handheld device while driving. This new penalty, which also covers infractions like watching a DVD, programming a phone’s GPS, and operating hand-held audio players, is being combined with the $167 fine already in place and is now consistent with the three points and $167 fine currently given to drivers for texting.

This minor collision turned alcohol fuelled road rage incident occurred on May 31, 2008 on Beach Avenue in Vancouver. Enrique Pacheco had stopped his car in the middle of Beach Avenue. A car driven by Tesfay Degife approached from the rear, sounded the horn and drove around the stopped vehicle.

Dan is a friend that I occasionally get together with to discuss road safety. He's a commercial trucker and driving instructor with a lot of experience behind the wheel. The last time that we had lunch together he made a comment that struck me and I promised to borrow for a column topic. "Don't let that become your default setting" made a lot of sense to me.

I glanced at the driver stopped beside me at a red light today. He was busily chatting with someone via the cell phone that he was holding to his ear with his right hand. A marked police vehicle pulled up to our right and stopped to wait for the red as well. The driver beside me noticed, put his phone on speaker, held his hand below dash level and kept on with his conversation.

The left lane is so popular lately that when I use the right lane I often find myself behind far fewer vehicles at the next red traffic light. In fact, at one particular intersection on my commute many times I can be first in line. Everyone else seems stuck in the left lane trying to get ahead, fuming, following too closely, making sudden lane changes and often all for the desire to exceed the speed limit and to be faster than everyone else.

I hear many drivers these days talking amongst themselves how they stay in the fastest lane when the traffic is backed up. To avoid the line they then attempt to merge by getting as close to the lane as possible and to the vehicle in order to intimidate the driver to let them in.

I was walking to my vehicle after work yesterday and watched the woman on the sidewalk ahead of me approach the intersection. She did not hesitate to step into the crosswalk even though a vehicle on her left had stopped halfway across it waiting to enter traffic. The driver was watching intently to her left waiting for a gap in traffic. The pedestrian checked her stride and I thought that she was going to wait for the driver to notice her before she crossed in front of the vehicle.

You may have seen the road rage video on social media lately where a woman doing the speed limit refuses to move out of the left and lane and a man driving a pickup wants by. He eventually passes and then drops back to wave a single digit and yell at the woman. He finally accelerates heavily and gets back into the lane in front of her, losing control and crashing in the median. She stops to laugh at the outcome.