Aggressive Driving

The case of R v Gray arises from an incident that occurred on the highway near Round Lake, B.C. A police patrol that was southbound on the highway observed 3 vehicles abreast approaching. The highway was only two lanes wide for northbound traffic so the third vehicle was being driven between the widely spaced solid yellow lines marked in the center of four lanes.

A good definition of an aggressive driver is "an individual committing a combination of moving traffic offences so as to endanger other persons or property." Do you fit this definition? Due to our built in optimism bias, the answer to this question is most likely "no."

An incident that took place in Surrey on March 26 was headlined as street racing, which brings to mind the following questions:  How is "street racing" defined? How do the courts recognize street racing as opposed to, say, speeding? And why are the rules currently on the books for things like speeding, reckless driving and endangerment alone not harsh enough to apply to street racers?

Joseph Munden and Ephrahim Barnett used to be neighbours, did not care for each other and were not on good terms. May 8, 2019 found the two at the intersection of 4th Avenue North and Proctor Street in Williams Lake. Mr. Barnett was riding his bicycle southbound on 4th and Mr. Munden turned from eastbound on Proctor to northbound on 4th.

I had an interesting conversation with a driver at the roadside one morning. I had stopped him for driving at 107 km/h in the posted 80 km/h zone entering a high collision area on Highway 4 east of Port Alberni. Speed is a particular problem as a primary contributor to collisions there.

"Why are you writing me a ticket for this? I wasn't driving dangerously." was his response to my request for his documents.

A reader explains that several times they've been on the highway and had someone, usually in a big truck or old car come right up behind, so close that they can't really see the front of the vehicle. The reader drives a small Toyota and is frightened by this bullying behaviour. The question is, what do you do when you find yourself in this situation?

It appears that drivers in Mumbai, India decided that if they all honked their horns the traffic signals changed to green faster. The resulting cacaphony results in sore eardrums, increased heart rate, added stress and contributes to traffic chaos. Something had to be done to preserve health and sanity.

This is a road rage incident that occurred near Saanich starting on McKenzie Avenue near Glanford Avenue and proceeding westbound. A pickup truck driven by Adam Gleeson engaged with a car driven by Ms. Kirkpatrick in what could be described as an episode of road rage culminating in Mr. Gleeson pulling up beside Ms. Kirkpatrick and spitting on her. This resulted in Mr. Gleeson being charged with assault and dangerous driving.

This must have been Following Too Closely Week in British Columbia. I received the story of an incident in Sooke, an analysis of a video from Richmond and was subjected to this dangerous behaviour myself. You might be able to get away with ignoring the Motor Vehicle Act, but the laws of physics will eventually prevail.

The following article is a study of tailgating from a 26-second video of Highway 91 submitted by a North Cowichan resident who visits Richmond often to get treatment for the brain injury he suffered after being rear-ended.

If you go by the Two-Second Rule, 79% of drivers were tailgating. And 26% were recklessly tailgating with less than one second separation. In this video, one driver is only 1.5 car lengths behind.