OPINION - Traffic Policing is Important for Safe Neighbourhoods

In some municipalities firefighters are attending collisions instead of the police. I've never felt comfortable with this decision for a number of reasons but even our government has joined in by removing the requirement to report collisions to the police. Morley Lymburner, publisher of Blue Line Magazine, a Canadian trade publication for the police writes on the subject. Traffic policing, especially in relation to collisions, is important to neighbourhood safety.

Link:

Police Own the Streets and Should Act Like it - Morley Lymburner

Ticket for potential of a collision, but not when it happens

Yes, police “opting” not to attend collisions is something that has concerned me. As a society we seem to blindly accept policing policies even if they don't make sense.

Does it make sense for police to look for violations on our highways, because such violations MIGHT cause collisions, but when a collision occurs (with the exception of the most serious) they don't attend, thus any violation that has CAUSED the collision goes un-investigated by an authority that can issue a ticket.

I'm of the mind that, similar to the policy of "fines double in construction zones", violations that cause collisions should also at least double.

Police tout the mantra, "if we attend collisions, we are just doing ICBC's job for them". That idea demonstrates how little police know about civil law and how inflated their egos are. Trust me ICBC doesn't rubber stamp a police investigation as their own. The most valuable part of police attending a collision is the police member's observations at the scene, locations of vehicles, perhaps a photo and perhaps identifying witnesses that may not have been recorded by those involved in the collision to supply to ICBC. Such independent witnesses can be of a great value to the ICBC investigation for the benefit of determining the actual facts of the collision.

So the police attending a collision, has the potential of punishing an offender that caused a collision and helping identify witnesses that will help ICBC to get to the truth to resolve the civil issues. Seems important to me.

All this lip service of how serious traffic violations are and the police want to prevent collisions, when in fact, the one area they don’t involve themselves in are the actual collisions that occur.

Police