Miscellaneous

This is a short trip down memory lane with a retired traffic cop: me. I've just recently completed a round trip from Vancouver Island to the West Kootenays and back and had plenty of time to think along the way. There were ghosts along Highway 3 from the Manning Park works yard to Rock Creek, one of my old patrol areas.

I just finished reading an article titled "Old People Should..." in the May 2019 edition of the Reader's Digest. It explained that we could find out what people ask Google most often by seeing how the search engine auto filled our queries. The top result for "old people should" was that they should not drive.

I took the idea one step further and searched on "drivers should."

The Malahat highway is the main north / south artery for southern Vancouver Island. Due, among other reasons, to it's relatively serious collision history that shuts down this highway for hours at a time, the provincial government is looking at ways to improve travel on the highway.

Does your community have a Traffic Safety Commission? The Capital Regional District's Traffic Safety Commission suggests that if you don't, you should. The Start a Commission page on their web site lists 10 reasons why and 10 suggestions on how start one.

Matthew Catling received two traffic tickets, one in Richmond for speeding in a municipality and one in Vancouver for using an electronic device. Mr. Catling filed separate Constitutional Question Act notices on both the Richmond and Robson Square prosecutions on November 2, 2017, and November 24, 2017, respectively. He asserted that s. 63.1 of the Offence Act violates Sections 7 and 11(d) of the Charter.

Have you ever given any thought to how efficiently traffic lights control the flow of vehicles? I found out last Friday afternoon at 5:30 pm as I traveled the 7.6 kilometers between Superior Road in Lantzville and Northwest Bay Road in Nanoose Bay on Highway 19. Total elapsed time: 40 minutes for a trip Google Maps says should take 5 minutes.

In general, traffic enforcement is a solitary effort for police outside of the province's municipalities. I've often wondered just how close I have come to something bad happening in a traffic stop while I was a long way away from the nearest backup. Since today is Thanksgiving, I want to tell a story where something bad did almost happen and I'm very thankful for the "almost."

I went to traffic court and officer asked for an adjournment due to fact he had not complied with my request for disclosure. My question is do I have to request for disclosure again or is it the officer's responsibility to give it to me now?

I think the issue was he was working for different jurisdictions at that time so there was some clerical error.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has released a special edition of the Status Report on autonomous vehicles. From the introduction:

The idea of self-driving cars has garnered so much press that consumers can almost be forgiven for thinking the latest cars can drive themselves.

Just listened to this great interview between an active defense lawyer and a retired traffic officer.