DriveSmartBC

The humble licence plate has but one job, positively identifying the vehicle it is attached to. Without license plates, how would we know who owned the vehicle? How would you complain about an erratic driver or report your stolen vehicle? Intersection Safety Camera (ISC) enforcement and Automated Licence Plate Recognition (ALPR) would be stymied and even the lowly parking ticket would have difficulty.

Here is another video from Road Guy Rob. This time he observes that crossing the street on your bike should be easy and safe.  There are stop lights to help you, but they also invite cars onto your bike route.  Engineers in Tucson, Arizona solve this dilemma with two special signals just for bicycles: Toucans and BikeHAWKs.

On August 28, 2014 a tour bus crash occurred on the Coquihalla Highway south of Merritt. 56 people were injured, 15 of them seriously. A civil action was taken against a number of parties involved in the tour that included Prevost, the manufacturer of the bus. Jie Ding and the other plaintiffs involved claim that their injuries were made worse by the lack of seatbelts on the bus.

Intersections are dangerous places. Yielding right of way is probably the main concern, but the path you travel through one is just as important. Some drivers are so sloppy with their technique that they activate the traffic signals by driving over the detection loops in the oncoming lane when they exit the intersection!

The case of Doyle v Hubick determines the liability for a two vehicle collision on the Sea to Sky Highway 32 km south of Pemberton. Both vehicles reached the end of the passing lane at about the same time. The drivers were unable to decide who should pull ahead and who should drop back ultimately resulting in a crash.

QUESTION: It seems to be a regular occurrence on our single highway Gibsons / Sechelt community to use the bus stops on the right side of the highway as passing lanes for those cars queued up behind a car turning left. I have thought it illegal to do this, so I wait behind the left tuning vehicle until they clear the highway. I have been passed on the right often by several cars behind me, using the bus stop.

I never know what I am going to receive in my e-mail regarding this column. Recently it was a tongue in cheek request to save a marriage by settling the question about U-turns between husband and wife. Neither one of them realized that there are really very few places in British Columbia where a driver can make a U-turn legally.

WalkRollMap.org is a crowdsourcing tool for mapping micro barriers to accessible walking and rolling. What is a micro barrier? Anything that makes it harder (or maybe even impossible!) to walk or roll safely or comfortably in your community. It might be a missing crosswalk, uneven payment, or unplowed snow. Whatever it is that is getting in your way, or missing (e.g. bench or washroom) we want to know what it is and where! Mappers can also report if they’ve been hit while walking or rolling, had a near miss, or a fall.

QUESTION: I live on a street where there is a T intersection. I'm wondering if it is OK to park in the top T portion of the intersection.

To complicate further - there is a curb let down (or curb ramp) on one leg of the T intersection. What is the distance required from the curb let down before a car can park? Is it 1.5 m (distance from driveway) or is it 6 m (distance from intersection)?

I watched the driver on either side of me this morning on my way to work. We were stopped waiting for a red light to turn green and I could see that both of them were totally focused on the that light. Neither one of them moved their heads and immediately started off when the light turned green. What a wonderful example of blind faith!