DriveSmartBC

This has been an interesting week for road safety. The Provincial Health Officer has released a report, Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Reducing the Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes on Health and Well-being in BC, that suggests lower speed limits in residential areas and the return of automated speed enforcement as a means of reducing injury and death on our roads. Tom Fletcher is the legislative reporter for the Black Press in Victoria. He quotes Minister Todd Stone's response to the report:

"We believe there are more effective technologies that can be employed, and frankly a better way to utilize precious police resources than to resurrect what was largely a failed photo radar program that was nothing more than a tax grab for British Columbians,"

Translink Buses

We are asked to give buses a break but the problem is that when they are parked at the curb the drivers have their 4 way flashers on. Unfortunately these 4 way flashers use the same lights as the turn signals. If there is more than one bus in the line when the driver switches from 4 way to turn signal  there is no way to tell what you are seeing.

A recent poll by Insights West found that 50% of Canadians feel that drivers in their city or town are worse than they were five years ago. The two top groups of bad drivers identified by three of every five of us were youth and seniors. To top it off, most of us have witnessed dangerous and illegal behaviour on our roads in the past month. Wow! Time to have a look at ourselves in the rear view mirror.

For the first time, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has tested and rated vehicle headlights. Of the 31 mid-sized vehicles examined, only one, the Toyota Prius, received a "good" rating. All the others rated acceptable, marginal or poor in roughly the same proportion. If you've wondered about glare from oncoming vehicles or thought that you weren't seeing well driving at night, the proof may be here.

You may be interested in the number of distracted drivers nabbed by Comox Valley RCMP in a recent 5 day campaign. They caught 91 drivers including one who received 2 tickets in one day-likely the same bad habit as the lady in Vancouver with 14 tickets.

I commend the local RCMP for their ability to detect these distracted driver as I rarely notice them any more. Speeding drivers are much more obvious.

Every once in a while a visitor to DriveSmartBC will pose a question that makes me go “hmm...” This week brought one of those moments with the query “Does a driver supervisor have to be sane?” Without thinking, my response was that of course a supervisor would have to be sane, but after I thought about it, the only thing that a supervisor requires is a minimum age and a valid driver's licence.

I'm just wondering if there is something in writing that states that the person who is being the supervising passenger, that is of age and holds a valid licence, is also required to be of sound mind and body. This meaning, specifically, that if the supervising passenger is drunk and unable to drive, they can still technically be the valid passenger, and the person with the "L" can still drive them home.

What advice do you have when driving in heavy traffic that is averaging 25 to 30 km. over the posted speed?  I was crossing Lake Okanagan bridge a few days ago  in the right lane and if I went 15 to 20 km. over the 60 km.

I grew up in a small town where there were no sidewalks unless you counted 4 sides from 3 blocks downtown. As children, we didn't pay much attention to the rule that required us to walk on the left facing oncoming traffic but we did make sure that we were on the edge or even off of the pavement when a vehicle drove by.

This video was produced by the Trucking Advisory Group of the BC Forest Safety Council. The introduction states "Log truck driver, Adrian Sunduk, shares his story of how a seat belt saved his life. Before attending an Anatomy of a Rollover session, he had never worn a seat belt off highway because he had always planned to jump out of the truck if ever he got into a situation … See what convinced him that he was wrong and how wearing a seat belt saved his life."