Changing Driving Behaviour

Stop traffic tickets that are designed to collect money.

Pass a legislation that forces every driver to answer 10 questions per month. In 1 year a person would have answered 120 questions in 10 years 1,200 questions and see how tickets vanish.

Fix the yellow light to be more than 4 seconds long because one needs the hell of a hard brake to stop with 4 seconds.

We all know and the municipality too. Money money money for municipal budgets. Sad but true

If this is not true then force people to enter the ICBC test program every month. 10 questions is literally 10 minutes.

Since the COVID pandemic, it seems that there has been an influx of mainlanders on the island. They haven’t yet adapted to the zen nature of our culture and it seems that people have become more in a hurry and I don't really understand why.

I avoid the Nanaimo Parkway or Island Highway for this reason and try to go on the less travelled roads.

I cannot comment on the efficacy of handing out speeding tickets but people are always racing to get somewhere.

My late father used to say, better to be a live chicken than a dead duck!!!

Not sure what the allocation is for traffic, but it APPEARS that there are less patrol cars on the roads..there is more and more manpower directed at the unhoused than vehicle issues..”where’s a cop when you need one?”

Behaviour that is rewarded is behaviour that is repeated.  To understand what is going on, just ask yourself: what behaviour is being rewarded?

A few years ago, I would have thought that technology could be used to consistently follow up on speeding and other infractions, but now I think the culture of disrespect for laws and order has been made acceptable by the Government of today.

A ticket that is in the recipient’s view justified, does I believe contribute to driver behaviour change. However, and particularly in the case of speeding, when the driver feels the ticket has not been fairly issued I don’t believe anything changes. I think drivers believe that revenue generation and quotas are the reason they were given a ticket so wouldn’t alter their performance.

I have driven many many times on the Nanaimo bypass at the posted speed limit and almost invariably I am passed by cars going over and well over the posted limit of 90 km/h. The bad part of my note is the fact that I rarely see any police presence 

I don’t think the traffic sections are proactive enough. A quarter of the tickets issued were by a camera well after the fact and without points. I received my fair share of tickets when I was a young driver and points mattered to us.  Plus this may not even be the wayward driver who is punished.  

Other than the Highway detachments, I rarely see an active traffic stop. I think behaviour patterns are more susceptible to change when the consequences are immediately felt and involve having to talk to an enforcement officer.

The only time I see a group of traffic officers doing enforcement is handheld device checks at red lights. Where did the old fashion “radar trap” go?  Not the race and chase kind, I mean the flag them onto a parking lot kind.

When discussing a subject, I find it productive to define the words contained in the subject.

You’ve used the phrase “bad” driving behavior. But, do all drivers, especially young ones define “bad” as drivers who disobeying traffic rules/laws ? I don’t think many younger drivers, the ones who make up the segment of the driving public responsible for the highest percentage of collisions, do. I think they define a bad driver as someone who has trouble maneuvering a vehicle, getting involved in collision but I don’t think strict obeyance to traffic laws is high on their definition of “bad driver”.

In the driving society of BC, we don’t penalize driving that has causes collisions the same way we penalize driving that might cause a collision.

The question, I guess is, does ticketing drivers who violate the law create as much of a deterrent as traffic laws directed at drivers who have caused collisions.

Our police have decided that investigating non-serious collisions “is just doing ICBC’s work for them”. A fallacy but an accepted opinion.

Scenarios :

• A driver amasses a number of traffic violations in a short period of time – their license is reviewed, and is likely suspended or is nearing suspension, they receive Driver Penalty Points and Driver Risk Premiums. Someone is watching them because they have been caught committing violation THAT MIGHT CAUSE A COLLISION.

• A driver is involved in a number of collisions in a short period of time – the police will refuse to attend the collision scene and don’t investigate as long as the collisions are not serious. The driver (or insured owner) will see an increase in their Claims Rated Scale in the following year (insurance premiums will go up). Even though they committed violation THAT CAUSED COLLISIONS, they receive no traffic violations.

Perhaps if traffic collision were investigated and traffic violation tickets issued to a driver who has been involved in a collision came with an enhanced penalty, or stricter review it would demonstrate the severity of being involved in a collision.

I was shocked to see that drivers can accumulate up to 14 points before they even get a warning letter. I think that number should be lowered to seven points. That would capture two 4 point tickets, or two 6 point tickets, or one of each.

I have never seen an example of a warning letter, but I think it should be very strongly worded. If the really bad drivers thought they might be banned, then perhaps that be a better way to change behaviour. It seems obvious that the present system just isn't working very well.

Also it would be helpful if ICBC premiums jumped dramatically after a warning letter was issued.

Not even close would be the short answer. It seems traffic court has become as pointless as the criminal courts across the country. While police may be getting a higher rate of convictions in traffic court, the reduction in unlawful driving incidents has gotten increasingly worse. Roads are more dangerous than they have ever been, even with the efforts to rid our streets of impaired driving from the batmobile days of the mid seventies.

It's the cumulative of the "little things" for me.

Turning right from the curb lane into the inside lane (failing to enter the same lane of travel), tailgating especially at speed on the highway, not knowing how to properly navigate and signal in a roundabout. Enforcement education campaigns for the turns and roundabouts would be effective with an observing officer and a ticketing/educating officer but that takes extra manpower and perhaps doesn't recover enough cost.

A system where people could easily submit dash cam clips and have offending drivers (owners), notified with educational information from police may help, especially for new drivers of a parent owned vehicle.