Q&A - Motor Assisted Cycle Ticket

Q&A ImageMy son received a traffic ticket from the police for driving without insurance and driving without a driver's licence. He was riding a bicycle that he has attached a small gas motor to and I think that this is a motor assisted cycle, not a motorcycle. If I am right, he doesn't need a licence or insurance and the police should not have issued the ticket. He has driven past police road checks with this cycle and none of them stopped him and told him that it was not legal. They should have done this first and not given him a ticket.

Determining Vehicle Speed from Yaw Marks

Yaw Striations in Tire MarkWhen a vehicle is in yaw it is rotating around a vertical axis through it's center of mass. The long, curved Y shaped marks left by the tires on the pavement were characteristic of this motion. If they were striated and of constantly diminishing radius they were of great interest for collision reconstruction because the vehicle's speed could be determined from them.

Q&A - Driving Without Reasonable Consideration for Others

Q&A ImageI was driving along no.6 in Richmond with a girlfriend and reached into my bag for smokes and an oncoming car came so I swerved a bit to the right and hit a hydro pole because it was so close to the shoulder and I ended up into a ditch. I wasn't speeding, it was a single car collision and nobody got hurt. Needless to say the car was a total loss.

RESEARCH - Run Off Road Crashes

NHTSA LogoA run off the road crash is generally a single vehicle event that results in a large number of injuries and fatalities for the occupants. While this is American data, it is quite likely that our Canadian experience is very similar, meaning that 95% of our run off the road crashes involve some kind of driver error.

VIEWPOINT - Don't Wave, Drive!

SoapboxSome of the most dangerous drivers on the road recently are those that are trying to be polite by waving a second driver to go when that second driver doesn't have the right of way. Drivers should just drive to the rules of the road, its safer and keeps the traffic moving in an orderly fashion.