Police

Many people think of traffic policing consists mostly of handing out speeding tickets. This is not the case as there are many other job functions that officers are responsible for. One that I often found to be an interesting challenge was conducting roadside mechanical inspections.

It is possible that a careful driver could pass their entire driving career without being pulled over by the police. It's a situation that is not covered in our provincial drivers manual Learn to Drive Smart and may only receive a brief mention during formal driver training.

Last week we looked at the story of a cyclist who was told by a constable that it was too dangerous to ride a bike on the road and he should find another hobby. Not knowing anything more about the encounter that produced this advice I asked the cyclist if he had done anything about questioning this attitude. No was the response, I'm afraid of retaliation.

What happened the last time that you decided to deal with a road safety problem? Were you successful in your quest? Were your views taken "for information purposes?" Did you get sucked into the whirlpool of "that's not my job" or worse still, ignored completely?

Q: I managed to stumble upon this website after I had an encounter with a dangerous driver. The driver of the vehicle drove dangerously, passing me on a double solid line in a 30 km/h playground zone.

Unfortunately, my direction of travel coincided with this driver's.

We often see serious collisions reported in the news where the offending driver was only issued a traffic ticket for the violation that caused it. Public sentiment often conveys the wish that the driver should have been charged criminally for what they have done. One yardstick for considering a criminal charge instead of a traffic ticket is whether the offending driver showed "a marked departure from the standard of care which a reasonable person would have exercised in the same circumstances."

The C.F.S.E.U. was in the news this week, probably not in the way they would have liked. You may have seen the dash cam videos from Richmond showing a number of vehicles apparently brazenly running red lights. The story hit the news amid amazed comments about how bad drivers were becoming in the Lower Mainland.

Quite some time ago I wrote about an initiative to trade your ticket for driver training. I was very pleased with the outcome of the one instance that I tried on my own, but the program never took off as the provincial government required the RCMP to provide it to all drivers if it was implemented. The Victoria Police Department is trying something similar through Restorative Justice Victoria.

I've written before about the three Es of road safety, education, engineering and enforcement. The enforcement component was the subject of a comment to me concerning a visible police presence on our highways. The observation was that unmarked cars and what seems like minimal enforcement creates a "I can get away with it" mindset.

I was wondering when police have the power or ability to take or suspend a driver's licence or impound their vehicle.

Essentially, what are police powers to immediately prevent a driver from driving after a traffic stop?