Government

The City of Surrey has released a year in review report for 2019 detailing it's accomplishments in meeting Vision Zero commitments. The City’s goal is an achievable and measurable shorter-term target: to reverse the trend of rising injuries and deaths on Surrey’s roads and achieve a minimum 15% reduction in injury collisions over the next five years (2019-2023).

Transport Canada has announced a new lighting standard aimed at preventing phantom vehicles, or vehicles being driven at night with no rear lights illuminated. As of September 2021 the Canadian Vehicle Lighting Regulation will mandate that new vehicles (cars, trucks, SUVs, 3-wheeled vehicles, motorcycles and heavy trucks) sold in Canada must implement one of the following:

Our provincial government has brought the majority of the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act into force effective on July 30, 2020. The aim of the act is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by regulating the sale of zero-emission vehicles. Starting in 2025, at least 10% of new light duty vehicles sold in BC must be zero emission.

Last September the Parents Advisory Committee (PAC) at the Ecole Oceanside Elementary School in Parksville asked me to help establishing a crossing guard program for what they considered to be a dangerous intersection at one corner of the school grounds. In past, the principal had raised the issue of liability concerns that needed to be looked into and that was the end of the conversation.

In December of 2015 RoadSafetyBC published the BC Communities Road Safety Survey. It's goal was to provide an overview of the municipal road safety activities and identify the challenges that might be limiting progress towards the goal of having the safest roads in North America by 2020.

Of 189 municipalities in the province, 81 responded. Those responses raised the following points:

The B.C. Coroner's Service has released a report that summarizes all accidental, traffic-related pedestrian deaths that occurred between January 1, 2012, and November 30, 2021.

When I was posted in the Okanagan in the 1990s I was answering phones in the detachment dispatch office. A caller from Summerland asked what would happen if he decided to take his protest sign down to the highway and conduct his own personal blockade. He expressed the opinion that if he did that the police would arrive quickly and if he did not move he would be removed.

Currently the B.C. Motor Vehicle Act sets a speed limit of 50 km/h on municipal streets when a different speed limit has not been posted by signs. A recent survey by Research Co. found that 58% of British Columbians would definitely or probably like to see residential speed limits of 30 km/h.

We don't hear a lot about B.C.'s Traffic Fine Revenue Sharing program except when the government is handing out grants to the municipalities. The money is supposed to be employed to "support community safety and address local policing priorities."

Our provincial government has announced that all 35 intersections with speed cameras will be in full operation by spring of this year. First introduced in 2019 fifteen red light cameras with the added ability to check vehicle speeds were installed at high risk intersections.