I'll Drive if I Want to

Devil's HeadI watched a television news story about a traffic collision that interviewed family members exiting the courthouse. One of the people lamented that if the known bad driver had been prohibited from driving the whole incident that brought them there never would have happened. If only it were that simple, because a driver will only stop driving after being prohibited if they want to comply with the law.

READING - Designing Streets for Kids

NACTO LogoDesigning Streets for Kids is a supplement to NACTO-GDCI’s Global Street Design Guide, which set a new global baseline for designing urban streets. This guide builds upon the approach of putting people first, with a particular focus on the specific needs of children and their caregivers as pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users in urban streets around the world.

REPORT - Understanding the Impact of Technology

ADAS sensor viewsDo Advanced Driver Assistance and Semi-Automated Vehicle Systems Lead to Improper Driving Behavior? This report summarizes an analysis of data from two naturalistic driving studies using vehicles equipped with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The outcomes shed insight regarding driver behavior while using ADAS versus driving under normal conditions and the safety implications.

READING - Autonomous Vehicles and Law Enforcement

Ticket WriterWho is responsible when an autonomous vehicle is doing the driving and the police intend to take enforcement action for an error it commits? This question is explored in a report from the Rand Corporation. While the report looks at the perspective in the US, the same questions will have to be answered here in Canada.

Mandatory Alcohol Screening

Alcosensor FSTOur society's tolerance for drinking and driving continues to narrow. When I started policing in the 1980s it was a major investigation to convict someone for impaired driving. An investigator had to develop skills and experience in the detection of alcohol impaired drivers to form grounds to make a breath demand and convince the court that it was an appropriate decision.

DIY - Speed Trap

ProLaserIIIMany people complain about the speed of traffic in their neighbourhoods. Is it an accurate complaint? How do you justify your complaint to the authorities? Well, there's an app for that too.

I remember hearing about a person who was tired of this so he measured the distance between two utility poles beside the highway that he could see from his kitchen window. He would site and time vehicles between the poles with a stopwatch.

ICBC - Public Access to Data

ICBC LogoICBC has announced a significant increase in data available to everyone via Tableau Public. Data sets for crashes and vehicle population current to 2019 are provided for manipulation, reporting and download. Crash data can be filtered for the details of an individual crash, including the street and crash configuration (for example, rear end, head on or side impact).