Pedestrians

Posts on X by @ScanBC this week reported a half dozen collisions involving vehicles and pedestrians around the province in a four hour period. Are you surprised that collisions with pedestrians are occurring?

Question: What I would like to know who and how to petition to get better speed signage or to have an intersection evaluated for safety. Please respond to my query as I would like to campaign to make a change at an intersection near my home before the 'near misses' that happen there regularly become more serious.

I was hit by a car today in Ladysmith. I was walking my dog on the sidewalk a car drove out of the drive thru , did not look and hit me hard enough to knock me a few feet to the ground. I call the rcmp. No charges for the driver. I seemed to be at fault. Please explain

A lot can happen in just the 23 seconds of this video contributed by Orang Gila, taken in Maple Ridge, just past the Safeway at Dewdney Trunk Road. Keep an eye out for the pedestrian on the right sidewalk mid-block who is clearly dithering about crossing the street and is having difficulty finding a large enough gap in the four lanes of traffic that she must cross on the busy street.

Fifteen year old Wiael Hmaied was crossing diagonally across Clarke Road in Port Moody near the Barnett Highway. He was walking against the red light displayed at the nearby intersection, not using a crosswalk, when he dropped his cell phone.

I was walking with a friend on a relatively busy road. We were walking in the white painted sidewalk portion facing traffic, so heading East towards Memorial. We were engaged in a conversation and didn’t hear the garbage truck approaching in the other lane (the right hand lane heading East) as garbage trucks do, he stopped to pick up garbage.

Metro Vancouver has several panhandlers who walk on the raised median in the middle of the roadway soliciting money from occupants of vehicles in the left turn lane waiting to turn at the intersection ahead.

Recently the Comox Valley Regional District purchased some land – the former railway grade from Royston to Cumberland. It has been used as an unofficial trail in the past, however I wasn’t aware of it. The trail is approximately 5.5 km long. However, part of this trail is on the Cumberland side of the Inland Island Hwy.

Question: Last week on my daily walk, my friend and I were crossing the old Island Highway at the bottom of Bay Street. It looked like we had a lot of time but oddly a younger aggressive driver actually sped up as we were crossing. It was no where a near miss (or hit depending on perspective) but it made me question that there are no crosswalks for close to a kilometre.

A reader observes "I was crossing West Mall at UBC over a speed hump towards the bus stop. A car was driving on West Mall and did not stop. When I showed the driver the white arrows on the pavement, he said that these were speed hump marks, not a crosswalk. I recognize that I might have been wrong assuming it was a pedestrian crosswalk, but then I started thinking, who should have the right of way?"