Police

Skidmarks left on the pavement at a collision scene tell the investigator many things about the events involved in a motor vehicle collision. One common example involves using the length of the mark to calculate pre-collision speed.

Question: What kind of qualifications do police officers have for doing mechanical inspections on vehicles? I have a 2010 GMC Sierra that I keep in excellent shape in all respects but I got a defective vehicle ticket and a safety inspection order after being stopped.

We live in a wonderful country where violence is still something relatively rare. If we are stopped by the police we tend not to worry and dig out our driver's license and vehicle registration wherever it might be in the vehicle. Some people even get out and walk back to the police car to see what is going on. These actions are meant to be polite and save time but today are not the right thing to do.

In my travels this week I was overtaken by a marked police vehicle travelling at 110 km/h in the posted 90 km/h zone. No emergency equipment was being operated. Instances like this are often complained about by the public as they see the police failing to follow the same traffic rules that they force everyone else to obey.

Effective March 8, 2019, the thresholds that require police to complete and submit a collision report to ICBC if they attend a crash scene have changed. The old trigger of $1,000 damage has been raised to $10,000 for property damage only collisions.

Last week we looked at the story of a cyclist who was told by a constable that it was too dangerous to ride a bike on the road and he should find another hobby. Not knowing anything more about the encounter that produced this advice I asked the cyclist if he had done anything about questioning this attitude. No was the response, I'm afraid of retaliation.

Question: I managed to stumble upon this website after I had an encounter with road rage. The driver of the vehicle involved drove dangerously, passing me on a double solid line in a 30 km/h playground zone.

We often see serious collisions reported in the news where the offending driver was only issued a traffic ticket for the violation that caused it. Public sentiment often conveys the wish that the driver should have been charged criminally for what they have done. One yardstick for considering a criminal charge instead of a traffic ticket is whether the offending driver showed "a marked departure from the standard of care which a reasonable person would have exercised in the same circumstances."

The C.F.S.E.U. was in the news this week, probably not in the way they would have liked. You may have seen the dash cam videos from Richmond showing a number of vehicles apparently brazenly running red lights. The story hit the news amid amazed comments about how bad drivers were becoming in the Lower Mainland.

Quite some time ago I wrote about an initiative to trade your ticket for driver training. I was very pleased with the outcome of the one instance that I tried on my own, but the program never took off as the provincial government required the RCMP to provide it to all drivers if it was implemented. The Victoria Police Department is trying something similar through Restorative Justice Victoria.