DriveSmartBC

Khalid Almardy was stopped by police in the early morning hours of October 21, 2017 in Victoria as he was a novice driver who was not displaying a new driver sign on his vehicle and was carrying too many passengers. Cst. Christians of the Capital Region Integrated Road Safety Unit detected the odour of liquor on Mr. Almardy's breath. Drivers in the Graduated Licensing Program must have zero blood alcohol when driving.

This is a short trip down memory lane with a retired traffic cop: me. I've just recently completed a round trip from Vancouver Island to the West Kootenays and back and had plenty of time to think along the way. There were ghosts along Highway 3 from the Manning Park works yard to Rock Creek, one of my old patrol areas.

In the MVA under section 189 it states that: (1) Except when necessary to avoid conflict with traffic or to comply with the law or the directions of a peace officer or traffic control device, a person must not stop, stand or park a vehicle as follows: (k) alongside or opposite a street excavation or obstruction when stopping, standing or parking obstructs traffic;

The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure has released the British Columbia Active Transportation Design Guide. The Guide addresses human powered modes of transportation and focuses primarily on walking, cycling and rolling. However, it also addresses single person electric vehicles such as electric bicycles, scooters, Segways, skateboards and hoverboards.

If I were to ask you what a flag person's job was, what would you reply? Assure orderly movement of traffic through a highway obstruction of some sort? Help everyone involved to be safe as they work on the highway? Why then do some drivers treat flagpersons so badly?

Question: My neighbour is a chronic alcoholic who regularly drinks and drives. He has been banned from the local liquor store and has run in to a wall with his van. Aside from physically forcing him to stop, who do I report him to before he kills himself and someone else?

My friend Paul often shares his insights as comments here as CompetentDrivingBC. I like his explanation of whether to signal or not and decided to share it with you. It's great advice that we should all practice all the time.

I am thinking about upgrading the sealed beams on a vintage car to LED headlights. The LED headlights I'm considering are marked "DOT SAE" on the front. Does that mean that they are legal on roadways in B.C.? The gentleman that posed this question also supplied a web site URL with more information that promised DOT approval and explained that these lights were used by international Baja racing teams. Sounds good, doesn't it?

A sizeable proportion of British Columbians would like to see changes to municipal speed limits, a new Research Co. poll has found.

Drivers in the Graduated Licensing Program (GLP) are forbidden to use electronic devices while driving. Mira McEachern was a 17 year old novice driver on September 17, 2016 when she was issued a traffic ticket for violating this rule. She was convicted of that offence (records do not indicate if it was because she paid the fine or was not successful in a traffic court dispute).