Pedestrians

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?"

Over the five years ending with 2012 B.C. saw an average of 2,300 pedestrian involved collisions with 2,400 injuries and 60 fatalities. Almost 42% of these were aged 61 or over. Males tend to be involved more often with 35 deaths each year compared to 25 female deaths.

Older pedestrians are less likely to survive a collision than younger people. It is also a fact of life that aging brings with it a reduction in perceptual abilities such as poorer vision, depth perception and increased chance of confusion. Add bad walking habits to the mix and an already risky situation becomes worse. All of the things that we teach our children to survive in traffic are equally applicable to older pedestrians.

Pedestrian Injury and Human Behaviour: Observing Road-Rule Violations at High-Incident Intersections is a study conducted by researchers from Simon Fraser University. They examined seven intersections in Vancouver known for the high incidence of pedestrian collisions.

A lot of people don't follow the so called rules when walking or riding bicycles. The rule of ride with traffic ....ride on the right side of the road. The real bad one I see is of all ages. People not walking toward traffic.

They walk on the right and have no chance to get out of the way of on coming dangers.

At the beginning of last December I wrote about my experiences as a pedestrian at night in the lower mainland of BC and how dangerous it can be. This time I'm going to admire my neighbour who goes out in all weather to walk her dogs. When it's dark she wears a white LED headlight with a reflective vest and she puts a red LED light on the collar of each dog. There's no mistaking them as they walk along the road edge!

Does a person being investigated for committing an offence under the Motor Vehicle Act have to provide their full name and address to the officer who demands it? It is an offence under the Criminal Code of Canada to obstruct an officer in the execution of their duty. A jaywalker in North Vancouver learned this the hard way.

This is the story of Lenord Russell, who exited a bakery in a mall and walked forward into a parking stall at the same time that Kenneth Parks drove into it to park his vehicle. A collision occurred in which Mr. Russell suffered injury to his knee and foot. The case before the court was to decide who was liable for the collision and discusses first that the mall parking lot is a highway and then goes on to examine the duties that Mr. Russell and Mr. Parks had to each other as pedestrian and driver.