I am often asked to write on the topic of senior driver re-exams when there is a crash where an older driver has mistaken the gas for the brake and collided with a building. People are concerned that many members of this easily identified segment of our society shouldn't be on the road.
Place two average adult feet side by side on a piece of paper and draw a box around their edges. The area of this box is about the same as the area of your tires in contact with the road on an average automobile. Tires are your only contact with the highway, and collisions result when that contact is lost.
Question: I cycle along a rural road near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. The road I am talking about has a 60 km/h speed limit and a marked one metre wide shoulder on each side. On garbage pickup days some people place their residential bins on the shoulder. When that occurs cyclists are forced to move over into the roadway. Is this practice allowed?
Is summer over already? It seems that the lawn is just coming out of dormancy in my yard but night time temperatures will soon dip below 7 degrees. That and the fact that it is almost October the first means that it's time to get winter tires installed. Winter tire and chain up routes will be in effect then.
#EyesFwdBC! September means that it is distracted driving campaign time. ICBC tells us that distracted driving is involved in about 38% of collisions in B.C. each year. On average, 78 people die each year in a crash where distracted driving is a contributing factor.
I've been reading Moving to Vision Zero: Road Safety Strategy Update and Showcase of Innovation in British Columbia and was struck by these words: "The Safe System Approach enables more ambitious progress by treating the road system as a product of numerous components." One of these components includes driving skills.
I am generally not a person who likes the rain, but as I sit with my coffee in hand looking out the window this morning I'm happy to see it. No doubt, so is the vegetation that depends on it. Not so for drivers though, social media has been full of well meant advice to slow down due to the potential of slippery roads.
The crew from the School Bus Garage in Keremeos tell about a person driving a motor home backing up to exit a driveway near a school bus that was dropping off children. The person didn’t appear to be paying attention and almost backed over one of the children. The crew thought that a big yellow school bus displaying flashing lights should have been a clue for the driver to exercise more care.
One of the loneliest books in the world might just be your vehicle's owners manual. Consigned to the glove box, many never see the light of day until they find a new home in the recycle bin. That's a shame because the manufacturer of your vehicle has put a lot of thought and important safety information on those pages.
Give them an inch and they'll take a mile. Since B.C. has allowed new motorized forms of transportation to use the roads people have pushed the limit even further, perhaps by thinking that if it is battery powered, it must be OK. Electric dirt bikes are one recent example of this.