British Columbia has over 620,000 km of resource roads that have been built to access natural resources by industry. They are also used by the general public to take part in recreational activities. They are not maintained to the same standard as public highways, if they are maintained at all. Four wheel drive or ATV type recreational vehicles may be required to use them.
I read the Victoria Times Colonist on line each morning and a story about jaywalking caught my attention. After reading the story all I am left with is the feeling that the situation was poorly explained and readers might decide that the police should have been doing more important things than enforcing pedestrian bylaws.
Kristen Kringhaug was standing in the driveway of her townhouse complex supervising four children ranging in age from two to four years old while they rode their bicycles. Li Men drove into the complex at low speed, prompting Ms. Kringhaug to begin to shepherd the children off of the driveway onto the grass shoulder. The two year old stopped and did not move off of the driveway, so Ms.
I spoke with a father once about his teen's vehicle. I had inspected it at roadside and because of various defects I had issued it a Notice & Order #2. The father was trying to convince me to withdraw the order because he knew that the vehicle would not pass inspection and it would be too expensive to repair.
One definition of crowdsourcing is where an organization obtains ideas from a large, relatively open and often rapidly evolving group of participants. An example of how this can be applied to road safety is found in the Spring 2021 edition of Transportation Talk, a publication of the Canadian Institute of Transportation Engineers. The City of Edmonton is asking it's citizens to participate as part of it's current Safe Mobility Strategy 2021 - 2025.
Here's a short 15 question quiz on distracted driving from Road Safety at Work. While the quiz is aimed at employers of and employees who drive as part of their job, it is equally applicable to anyone who carries an electronic device with them when they drive.
Tania Shelford is a company driver whose vehicle is equipped with a two way mobile radio that allows her to contact her dispatcher. She was using that radio to acknowledge the end of her shift when she was observed by an RCMP officer who stopped her and issued a traffic ticket for distracted driving. She disputed the ticket.
It's a beautiful spring day outside and I don't feel like writing a serious article for you this morning. I'm going to wander off in another direction and tell you a story about a bright, sunny day beside a BC highway where a group of us had set up a laser speed monitoring operation that was keeping us busy. A gentleman with a shiny new combination radar and laser detector on his dash has just been waved over for a ticket.
Two way left turn lanes are designed to reduce traffic congestion and rear-end collisions when turning left mid-block while saving the space otherwise required for a dedicated left-turn lane in either direction.
We are becoming more and more aware that our streets have been designed for motor vehicles and they are not prepared to accommodate cycle and pedestrian traffic safely. If we approach municipal authorities, their engineers point to the TAC Geometric Design Guide for Canadian Roads and refuse to budge from what it contains.