Road Guy Rob is a civil engineer who delights in explaining traffic engineering to the public. Although he is based in California, some of the information contained in his videos applies equally well here in British Columbia. In this episode he looks at a traffic calming project that went wrong. He asks the question "Have you ever seen a street get a DUI?"
Amid the chaos of a collision scene came a call over my police radio: "Grab that vehicle, it just drove around the cones and into oncoming traffic!" Not only did the emergency workers have to deal with a two vehicle collision in an intersection full of emergency vehicles, they also had to contend with drivers who were going through no matter what.
QUESTION: @JohnsonStBRDG asked on Twitter about crossing the intersection of Cook Street and Oxford Street in Victoria. He wants to cross Cook directly on the south side of Oxford instead of walking the U shaped path indicated by the marked crosswalks that is assisted by the traffic lights. Is it legal to do this?
Transport Canada amended the Motor Vehicle Safety Regulations on December 22, 2022 to require minimum levels of noise from hybrid and electric vehicles. According to the news release, under the new requirements, all hybrid and electric vehicles will now be required to have sound emitters that would produce noise at low speeds. Automakers can determine the type of sound the vehicle makes, but the volume and pitch must allow a road user to hear if a vehicle is speeding up or slowing down.
Have you ever given any thought to how far you can see at night as you are driving along down the highway? High beam headlights seem to overpower the dark, but there are a lot of situations where we are limited to using just the low beams. I was required to calculate the safe speed using only low beam headlights at a seminar and I was surprised at the result.
Vancouver's Worst Drivers is a YouTube channel that features submitted dash cam video from BC's Lower Mainland highlighting examples of terrible driving. The videos show collisions, people being dumb behind the wheel, people having no idea how rules of the road work, pedestrians doing stupid things, along with rants on things that drive the channel author nuts about other drivers.
Aside from fire or being hit by other vehicles post crash, a danger most of us may not consider is electrocution. If the collision that you are involved in includes a kiosk or utility pole BC Hydro would like you to know about the dangers presented by electricity.
Party Hearty! Early in my policing career it was not uncommon to find a drunk driver with a blood alcohol level between .30 and .36. These people were truly drunk and not just impaired as most of us would start to be at the .05 level. Time to head for home and sleep it off because some of us have to be at work in the morning.
Have you ever wondered if our B.C. provincial highways are being maintained to the proper standard? Just what are those standards? The B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union web site contains that information in a short video explanation. The video explains who is responsible and how to advise them that a problem exists so that it can be remedied.
Todd Litman of the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute (VTPI) says that Vision Zero will require a change in the way driving risks are measured and future safety strategies are evaluated.