Welcome to wet road season in British Columbia! Some areas are blessed with this situation more often than others, but drivers need to be aware of the perils of wet highways. The wellbeing of you and other road users depend on it.
This must be speed week as I have heard from two drivers who are having difficulty following the speed limits and one who knew that he was speeding and wanted advice to plan his ticket dispute. The three situations give some insight into how the pressures of every day driving encourage us to disobey.
I've probably said this before, but when I applied the same tolerance under the speed limit as I did for those driving over the speed limit and factored in the advisory signs for speed I seldom found a driver going slower.
A recent survey by ResearchCo has found that 7 out of 10 British Columbians approve of using intersection cameras to conduct speed enforcement as well as ticketing red light runners. The survey also found that just over half of us also support the use of point to point speed cameras while over 3 in 5 support either fixed or mobile speed cameras.
Tejveer Parmar was ticketed for speeding on Kittson Parkway in Delta. He testified at trial that another driver had continually pulled in front of his vehicle and braked. He decided that the only opportunity available to him was to exceed the posted speed limit and pass this vehicle in order merge safely into traffic. The traffic court justice convicted him for traveling 81 km/h in the 50 km/h zone.
On the 14th of November, 2015 at about 9:00 am, Ken Chung was operating an Audi northbound on Oak Street approaching West 41st Avenue in Vancouver. Evidence suggested that his speed was about 140 km/h in the 50 km/h zone.
Q: I was issued two tickets in June of 2018, one of them for excessive speed. I was and still am an N driver. It occurred at 142 Street and 72nd Avenue in Surrey in a speed trap. I acknowledge the fact that I was speeding but did not reach the over 40km/h threshold. I have evidence from my iPhone 8 Plus and the Life 360 app that shows the speed I reached was 3km/h fewer than 40km/h over the limit. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Zihe Ren was convicted of speeding for traveling in excess of 80 km/h in the posted 50 km/h zone of the 4900 block of West 16th Avenue in Vancouver. He appealed the conviction citing that:
The investigating officer, by mistaking the model of his vehicle on the traffic violation ticket, demonstrated that he was “obviously absent-minded" and it should be assumed that he was equally absent-minded about his estimate of the accused’s speed; and
The decision is invalid because the investigating officer did not provide calibration records of his “speeding radar".