Canada Road Safety Week 2020
Slow down and save lives is the message for Canada Road Safety Week 2020. Road Safety Week started in 1985 as a national effort by the Canada Safety Council to promote the use of seatbelts. Since then, it has focused on the four most common contributors to road casualties: not wearing seatbelts, driving while impaired by alcohol or other drugs, aggressive driving and distracted driving.
RoadSafetyBC reports collision statistics for the period 2009 to 2018 in B.C. The table on page 6 appears to show that while the collision trend is increasing, police investigations of them are decreasing.
ICBC reports on traffic tickets issued by police for the period 2013 to 2017. A scan of category totals shows a steadily decreasing trend in the number of tickets issued.
ICBC collected a Road Safety Levy of $11.66 for every vehicle registered in B.C. this year. The levy will raise almost $41 million for "road safety including enhanced law enforcement." I asked for information on how this money is spent and received the following response:
For fiscal year 2019/20, ICBC estimates to spend $40M on Road Safety & Enhanced Law Enforcement(1) primarily to support enhanced enforcement initiatives, such as CounterAttack, distracted driving, speed enforcement, and seat belt checks, as well as to improve roads.
Aside from costs to administer the programs, the funding is divided as follows:
- Enhanced Road Enforcement 57%
- Road Improvments 24%
- Education & Awareness 19%
(1) funded through basic premium and excludes auto crime and fraud management costs
Are we complaining about the problem and then failing to do what is necessary to solve it?