Viewpoint

I'm becoming paranoid when I drive. I know how easy it is to make a mistake because even though I am paying attention and trying not to, I make them. Watching others while I'm driving impresses on me that I'm not alone. Sometimes it is difficult to decide if it is a genuine error or simply a case of not being bothered to drive well, but I suspect that there is a lot of the latter taking place on our roads.

Is it the highway's fault when there is a collision? A Facebook page dedicated to bringing improvements to an intersection on Vancouver Island that frequently sees major collisions raises that point. It also raises a number of suggested fixes for the issue.

I 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.

According to media reports some drivers are taking advantage of the current light traffic conditions to behave badly. When stopped by police and ticketed for their actions the latest response is "Why aren't you fighting the epidemic instead of writing tickets?" I have it on good authority that you are more likely to die in a traffic collision than you are from contracting the COVID-19 virus.

Road Safety Vision, Vision Zero and B.C. Road Safety Strategy, three programs that you will see mentioned repeatedly on this site. However, what you won't see are the results of these programs. I used my favourite search engine this morning to try and track down some results that show the aims in these programs being met, or changes that are being made because what we are doing is not working.

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.

Chuck Hawks turned a career in the motorsport and automotive industries into being the CEO of Teen Driving Solutions School, a US non-profit organization. In this TED Talk, Chuck speaks about the state of driving in the US today. His opinion is not a flattering one. It's not much different in Canada.

I've been driving with eDriving's Mentor app for about a year now and know that it has made improvements in my skills. I haven't cracked the top 10% barrier yet, but I'm still trying! The secret to having a high score appears to be trying to anticipate and plan for what is happening around you as you drive.

In this article Paul discusses inattention blindness. "A phenomenon that occurs when the brain is engaged in something else besides driving and your brain fails to process some of the available visual information." The conclusion is that our focus must shift from “hands on the steering wheel” and “eyes on the road” to “brain on the road”.

Our current system of trying to change driver behaviour largely consists of traffic tickets, vehicle impoundment and driver's licence suspensions. They all rely on traffic policing to find and deal with those who don't follow the rules. How efficient is that?