A number of readers contacted me after I told a story about a man walking behind me when I was preparing to back out of a parking stall. These readers all advised me that I should back into parking stalls rather than driving forward into them. The benefits of doing this outweigh the convenience of entering the stall nose first in all cases but one.
Todd Fewer and Edward Powell live across the alley from each other in Vancouver but have never met. There is an ongoing issue with Mr. Powell having trouble backing up to exit his carport due to the position of Mr. Fewer's garbage bins. The bins are often knocked over and the garbage that they contained was not picked up by city crews.
Every year in Canada, drivers kill 16 child pedestrians and 5 child cyclists. They also injure 1,300 and 700 respectively. Sadly most of these incidents are preventable and we can do things to make it safer for children to walk or ride a bicycle in our community.
Whoosh! Here comes a car overtaking my police vehicle at 144 km/h in the posted 110 km/h zone. It's dark at 11:30 pm and at that speed, any animal or object on the road won't be identified in time and a collision is almost sure to occur.
British Columbia's Traffic Fine Revenue Sharing program transfers the net revenue from traffic tickets back to local governments as a source of additional funds to support community safety and address local policing priorities. Transfer grant amounts are based on an area’s policing costs relative to the total policing costs paid.
One of the drawbacks of living on Vancouver Island is having to drive at night in the rain. Where there is no street lighting present I find it like driving into a wet sack of coal. When the road markings are worn I must slow down in order to be safe because it is difficult to maintain proper lane position.
One of my preferred enforcement practices was to use an unmarked car and drive in the right hand lane at or just under the speed limit. This gave me plenty of time to look at and into whatever passed by on my left. Tinted windows, failing to wear a seatbelt, distracted driving and other things of interest to a traffic cop were often easily discovered.
This video demonstrates a system called Safety Insights created by the Ford Motor Company. The system uses data provided by connected vehicles to assist engineers in anticipating collision problems, testing countermeasures and deciding which to apply through cost / benefit analysis. The expected outcome is collision prevention rather than applying corrections after they occur.
My article on driving lights led to a number of requests to write a follow up article on fog lights. The original question involved vehicles that were driving with four lights on all the time and two of them were not being dimmed for oncoming traffic.
Jennifer Harvey was riding her bicycle southbound on Ontario street entering the roundabout at Athlete's Way in Vancouver. As she entered, she noted a car ahead of her that was stopped but had the backup lights on. Ms. Harvey did not decide to stop until the car began to back up, but by then it was too late, the car collided with her.