DriveSmartBC

I often travel in a cab with my mother, who is in a wheelchair, and the safety straps let go twice. What should I do about this?

We take many of our driving cues from what is happening around us when we are in traffic. If we are paying attention and watching for the correct cues all goes well. Stop paying full attention to the driving task, accidentally take the wrong cue and you can easily cause a collision.

I’ve always understood penalty points to be a kind of score keeping method to assign a level of risk to the breach of a traffic rule. The more dangerous the violation, the more penalty points that would be assigned to a driving conviction. Rack up too many points in a set period of time and you would have to pay ICBC premiums and risk a driving prohibition from RoadSafetyBC.

The case of Danks v Middelveen arises from a three vehicle collision at the intersection of the Lougheed Highway and Harris Road in Pitt Meadows. A point of interest in the case involves the stopping distance behind other vehicles when everyone is waiting for the traffic lights to change.

The City of Victoria has rebuilt the intersection of Fernwood Road and Haultain Street to include centre islands, crossrides, sharrows and a right in, right out restriction for Haultain. This has resulted in confusion among road users leading to collisions.

The last time we drove up the Coquihalla from Hope we saw that the plow trucks had not taken care to plow out the chain-up pull-outs for commercial trucks. How are these commercial drivers expected to put on their tire chains safely?

The trucks are all lined up along the right lane of the road, thus forcing regular traffic into one lane.

I spoke to a woman this week who was upset at the way the police had handled the clearing of an out of control party at a residence. Impaired driving was the inevitable consequence of requiring the teens to leave immediately.

The case of R v Zhang involves the dispute of a traffic ticket for speeding and not displaying a new driver sign. Mr. Zhang pled guilty to disobeying a traffic control device instead of the speeding offence. He did not know that the disobeying a traffic control device conviction included penalty points.

I'm flabbergasted that motorcycles with loud exhausts seem to be the "sacred cows" of our highways and byways. I recently spent about 18 hours working at a job site immediately adjacent to Harvey Avenue near Pandosy Street, during two sunny days of spring weather. The number of loud motorcycles and "jacked-up" diesel 4 x 4's trucks that constantly hammered their throttles was astonishing.

B,C.'s Slow Down, Move Over law came into effect over two decades ago. When an official vehicle is stopped at the side of the highway and displaying flashing lights, red, blue or yellow, approaching traffic is required to slow down and move over. The law is meant to provide a safe workspace for the emergency and roadside workers.