Speed

Information related to vehicle speed and speeding.

CASE LAW - R v Beheshti

BC Courts Coat of ArmsThis case involves Doctor Benham Beheshti who was a physician at a hospital in Port Moody and lived in Vancouver. On August 30, 2015 he was on call and summoned to the hospital to treat a seriously ill patient. He was stopped for speeding on Pender Street and issued a traffic ticket by a member of the Vancouver Police Department.

CASE LAW - R v Gjoka

BC Courts Coat of ArmsMarlen Gjoka was travelling eastbound on the Trans Canada Highway entering the posted 50 km/h speed zone that begins near the Harriet Road intersection. Constable Klear of the Saanich police department was stationed 350 meters into the zone observing and measuring the speeds of approaching traffic. He estimated Mr. Gjoka's speed at 100 km/h and using an UltraLyte LRB laser device he measured the speed at 99 km/h.

READING - Travel Time Savings and Speed: Actual and Perceived

image of rocket carThis report, dated May 2017, produced for the New Zealand Transport Agency. It aimed to understand time saving as a motivation for New Zealand drivers’ speeding in the context of other motivations for speeding, and to investigate the effect of education that aimed to improve participants’ understanding of the costs and benefits of speeding.

Measuring Vehicle Speed With Laser

Laser GunI can remember the anticipation when our highway patrol unit was issued it's first laser speed measuring device, an LTI 20/20 Marksman. Imagine! Here was a device that we could point at a single vehicle in the traffic stream and accurately measure only it's speed. It was fast enough to re-target and measure the vehicles around it too. No one would want to use hand held radar once we were trained on this.

VIDEO - Other People Make Mistakes - Don't Speed

VideoThis video comes from New Zealand, another jurisdiction that tends to be more graphic with it's road safety advertising. Two drivers stop in freeze frame and discuss the collision that is about to happen. One apologizes for driving too fast and the other for not stopping at the stop sign. The driver that failed to stop highlights the fact that he has his son in the car. Both bow to the inevitable, re-enter their vehicles and the crash ensues.

CASE LAW - R v Brownson

BC Courts Coat of ArmsNadia Brownson was driving her pickup truck on First Avenue, within a 50 km/h speed zone, in Prince George on a rainy, autumn night. Scotty Bryan and Tony Shubert had been dropped off near the Dominion Street intersection and were crossing First Avenue from north to south near a nightclub. They saw Ms. Brownson approaching but thought that they had sufficient time to cross.

Solving Residential Area Speeding Problems

Speed DemonThis is a story from Chestnut Street in Parksville, but could just as easily take place on any residential street in British Columbia. It appears that both the residents there and the City Council are upset about the speeds of the drivers who use that street. What no one seemed to agree on was what to do about it beyond asking police to do enforcement and perhaps posting the speed limit at 40 km/h.

VIDEO - Rethink Speed

VideoQuoted from the YouTube video page: Our speed is one of the few things we control on the roads. While speed doesn’t always cause crashes, it always determines the severity of a crash. This is because the speed we travel at creates a force and it’s our vehicle and our bodies that absorb this force in a crash. This means the faster we choose to travel, the more severe a crash will be (whether the crash is our fault or not).

Q&A - Slow Down, Move Over Education

slow down move over signI’m a professional driver on the Island,I have been driving since the mid 60s and have logged many accident free kms. My interest in writing is the “slow down, move over law." I have done it for decades. Not enough drivers seem to be aware of it.

The signs posted on the highways are difficult to read at 120kmh the most prominent portion of them is a red and blue light on top of a sedan.