What Would You Say?
- Read more about What Would You Say?
- 5 comments
- Log in to post comments
Last week I received an e-mail from a young lady who was a student at a university in eastern Canada. She was involved in a traffic safety program on the campus that aimed to make it more pedestrian and bicycle friendly. She said that they had posted a number of new signs and painted some crosswalks but the drivers largely ignored them and drove the way they always did, which wasn't courteous to other types of road users.
The Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF) is pleased to announce the launch of the Young and New Driver Resource Centre. The new centre is a one-stop shop on young and new driver issues that is designed for parents, young and novice drivers, researchers, and policymakers.
Who is responsible for a crash? This is a question that I am asked fairly frequently, usually by a driver who is expecting that the other driver is totally at fault for a collision that they have been involved in.
Have you ever been traveling a long distance from home and received a traffic ticket that you felt you should dispute in court? Were you disappointed to learn that in order to dispute the allegation you would have to travel all the way back to the court nearest to the place where the ticket was written? Many drivers decide at this point that the issue is not worth pursuing, pay the ticket and carry on.
"Ah, the Christmas driving spirit is manifesting itself everywhere. I was sitting in a mall parking lot waiting for my wife and whiling away the time by watching what was going on in the vehicles around me. It was not a happy time of year for the occupants of some of them!
Have you noticed the growing tendency of lazy drivers who are now crossing over oncoming lanes of traffic to stop in front of particular addresses? It used to be that I would happen to notice people parked facing the wrong way in front of houses but now a week doesn't go by where I come nearly face to face in a game of parking chicken with a driver who has decided to cross over the center line to stop in front of a house.
Back on the 25th of July I wrote about the rash of motorcycle collisions on Vancouver Island. Most were attributed to driver error and I wrote that the Graduated Licencing Program gave new drivers plenty of time to develop their skills before moving on to the next stage.
OK, hands up those of you who have taken formal driver training in the past five years and were not learning to drive for the first time. Heck, hands up everyone who has ever taken formal driver training after you first obtained your driver's licence. Perhaps I need glasses, but I don't see a forest of hands waving out there!
This year has not been a good year for motorcycle collisions on Vancouver Island. Of nine fatalities, police report that seven of them have been the fault of the rider. Speed and inexperience are the cited contributing factors.