Q&A - Collision Investigation

I understand the need to expend resouces to investigate serious accidents, but should not more resources be dedicated to preventing crashes and injuries?

But how would these resources be applied, without the knowledge that comes from investigation and analysis of crashes that have occurred?

And if you're a victim of someone else's bad behaviour, and as a consequence you have suffered personal injury and property damage, then as both a taxpayer and an insured driver who has paid premiums to ICBC for years, isn't it your right to have the facts established - this seems particularly important, given ICBC's outrageous behaviour in the way they treat their clients who have suffered loss.

It's good to know that the local RCMP in your area found something more useful to do than hide out on Highway 19 waiting to pick off speeders (they don't ever seem to nab the inattentive, distracted, anti-social fools who follow too close, make aggressive lane changes, or fail to deal with merging situations properly).

The majority of crashes (I'm excepting pedestrian incidents here) involve two vehicles.

The majority of crashes occur at, or approaching, intersections.

The most common crash is the rear-ender (the cause is obviously following too closely) followed by right-of-way infractions.

And for years now, the police have been increasingly ignoring these facts, whilst hiding behind the 'speed is the factor' argument. Which is meaningless; if you leave your car parked then it won't be in a collision, unless someone drives into it. But if it isn't parked, then obviously speed is a factor - it's moving, right up until the point where it collides with something and suddenly stops.

So why don't we see more monitoring - and ticket writing - by police, for the multitudinous occasions of collision-causing behaviour on our roads?

I think we used to live in a civil society, and this was reflected in the way that all road users conducted themselves. Now, I'm not so sure.