Viewpoint

I learned this week that Canadians are considered to rank 42nd out of 50 countries based on how good they are to drive in. This disappointed me until I sat back and thought about it a bit. Based on a bit of self examination and what I see happen around me when I drive I think that I have to say that we are not serious about road safety. Financial loss, injury and death are part of the cost of allowing everyone to move when and where they wish to.

"You don't care about safety! All you guys want to do is suck money out of my pocket!" Here was a speeder that was very definite in his opinion and not afraid to state it. He was wrong, I did care about safety, but my traffic cop toolbox didn't contain many officially sanctioned options for dealing with it.

It is impossible to drive anywhere in town without seeing blatant road law, rule and safety violations. ICBC needs (to be disbanded, and insurance be public first of all) to implement a refresher course at certain intervals for a VERY complacent driver base.

I've often thought to myself over the years that if I ever wanted to kill someone the best way to do it would be to drive over them. I would wait until I found them stepping into a crosswalk and make sure that I hit them while I was turning onto the street they were crossing. I would then screech to a halt, return and scream "Oh no, I didn't see them, I'm sorry!"

I'm becoming paranoid when I drive. I know how easy it is to make a mistake because even though I am paying attention and trying not to, I make them. Watching others while I'm driving impresses on me that I'm not alone. Sometimes it is difficult to decide if it is a genuine error or simply a case of not being bothered to drive well, but I suspect that there is a lot of the latter taking place on our roads.

I revisited this old article from 2009 today. It concerned a Facebook page dedicated to bringing improvements to an intersection on Vancouver Island that frequently sees major collisions. Dividing the highway, adding concrete barriers, prohibiting turns, reducing the speed limit, installing traffic lights and other similar suggestions make up the majority of the solutions put forward by concerned people whenever events like these occur.

I watched a television news story about a traffic collision that interviewed family members exiting the courthouse. One of the people lamented that if the known bad driver had been prohibited from driving the whole incident that brought them there never would have happened. If only it were that simple, because a driver will only stop driving after being prohibited if they want to comply with the law.

According to media reports some drivers are taking advantage of the current light traffic conditions to behave badly. When stopped by police and ticketed for their actions the latest response is "Why aren't you fighting the epidemic instead of writing tickets?" I have it on good authority that you are more likely to die in a traffic collision than you are from contracting the COVID-19 virus.

Road Safety Vision, Vision Zero and B.C. Road Safety Strategy, three programs that you will see mentioned repeatedly on this site. However, what you won't see are the results of these programs. I used my favourite search engine this morning to try and track down some results that show the aims in these programs being met, or changes that are being made because what we are doing is not working.

Last September the Parents Advisory Committee (PAC) at the Ecole Oceanside Elementary School in Parksville asked me to help establishing a crossing guard program for what they considered to be a dangerous intersection at one corner of the school grounds. In past, the principal had raised the issue of liability concerns that needed to be looked into and that was the end of the conversation.