Behaviour

We just renewed the insurance on our car. It cost us $764 for basic insurance coverage on our 2013 Honda CR-V. I can hardly wait for next year to see what we will be paying to make up for this year's $935 million ICBC loss.

I've always been interested in driving and technology, so when I had the opportunity to combine the two, I jumped at it. eDriving provided access to their Mentor app for me to test. How would I measure up?

I installed the Mentor app on my tablet as I don't own a personal cell phone. The app is meant to be used on a cell phone but appeared to work properly on the tablet. It was just a bit awkward to put in my truck because of the size.

I don't try to be a bad driver, quite the opposite in fact, I try to do my best when I get behind the wheel. However, being human, I occasionally fail. So do we all. Hopefully that sets me apart from drivers who don't know any better, drivers who let their skills slip and drivers who really don't care.

This week ICBC rolled out a new road safety campaign called Drive Smart. It's aimed at increasing driver knowledge, promoting staying focused while driving and looking out for the safety of other road users. There is also a special social media hashtag: #KnowYourPartBC.

Perhaps the most effective way to improve road safety is by improving road user attitude. If selfish and unsafe behaviours can be shown as detrimental and users convinced to choose what is beneficial on their own reaching our Vision Zero targets have a better chance of being successful.

The mature male driving a Porsche Boxster convertible in front of me provided the first bad example for this story. The light turned green and he stalled it. By the time he had started it again the light had turned red and we all ended up waiting for the next cycle.

As drivers, we tend to think that if we can see pedestrians, they can see us, especially during the day. This may not be the case with children if we are driving at speeds of more than 30 km/h. This is also the speed above which the chance of significant injury or death begins to be much higher for pedestrians who are struck by vehicles.

Over my lifetime so far, I've gone from a child who rode on a foam mattress in the back of our family station wagon on summer road trips to a grandfather who would not dream of driving anywhere without grand daughters safely buckled up in proper child restraints. Needless to say, wearing my own seatbelt has become a reflex action. I'm uncomfortable if I don't wear it and don't notice it when I do.

This report, dated May 2017, produced for the New Zealand Transport Agency. It aimed to understand time saving as a motivation for New Zealand drivers’ speeding in the context of other motivations for speeding, and to investigate the effect of education that aimed to improve participants’ understanding of the costs and benefits of speeding.

Sometimes when I read articles on road safety I come across one that really resonates with me. A story from 2008 written by Paul Hergott titled Drivers Need to Smarten Up When Out on the Road is one of them. Paul starts off by saying "We’ve got ourselves a serious attitude problem. We see driving as a right."