Safety Strategy 

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These pages are a summary of our on-going comprehensive plan.  We welcome your suggestions... please send us your ideas and comments

Objectives:

A recognition that...

• in the absence of viable alternatives, road transportation is the economic and social lifeblood of British Columbia.
• speed is a major element of efficient transportation.
• all roadways must be designed to move people and freight safely and efficiently, and to affect the surrounding people and environment as minimally as practical.
• all citizens have a responsibility to act in a courteous and safe manner, and be attentive to the conditions surrounding them at all times.
• reasonable enforcement of reasonable laws for the reasonable majority must be applied to ensure efficiency, safety, and civility.

To ensure safe drivers through skill enhancement:

• Improved driver skill training to include: freeway conditions, poor road condition driving, skid pad driving, basic vehicle repair and maintenance, courtesy and co-operation, legal obligations and considerations.
• Mandatory re-testing of drivers with licenses from other jurisdictions that don't use equivalent educational programs.
• Mandatory periodic re-testing of all drivers.
• Comprehensive driving skill test.
• Comprehensive legal/courtesy test.
• Reward system for achieving advanced or higher levels of driver training.
• Instruct drivers that the speeds must be moderated depending upon conditions, and that posted speed limits (under the 85th percentile methodology) represent maximum safe speed under ideal (not average) conditions.

To encourage excellence in education:

• Standardized driver training curriculums.
• Mandatory certification of driving schools and instructors, with periodic re-certification.

To ensure safe attitude through awareness:

• Road awareness programs introduced through public education beginning in pre-school.
• Pedestrian education aimed at all groups, specifically including seniors and children.
• Cycling, roller blading, skate-boarding, etc., education programs.
• Fatigue programs to highlight the true number of accidents related to this serious problem.
• Behaviour modification achieved by advertising, direct mail, and positive reward stimulus, not penalization.
• Motorcycle awareness programs and safe cycling programs.

To reduce hazardous situations:

• Upon identification of a high accident zone, an engineering study is to be promptly completed to identify possible causative factors: e.g. signage, geometrics, surface characteristics, visibility problems. In the event that excessive speed is not ruled out, the appropriate action would generally be to alter the roadway geometrics so that drivers perceive that they are travelling too fast, and thus the drivers would lower their speed.
• Washboard rumble strips — to warn motorists of upcoming hazards, speed zone changes, …
• Shoulder rumble strips — as necessary, to prevent fatigue related crashes.
• Pavement marking patterns (converging chevron pattern, transverse bar pattern, etc.) — illusionary pavement markings which subconsciously cause the motorist to slow down.  Use before bridges and other speed-related accident locations.
• Improved signing and delineation of routes to reduce congestion, and promote orderly and safe traffic flow.
• "Blackspot" signage to warn of high-accident locations.
• Replacement of unnecessary stop signs with yields.

To minimize vehicle interactions:

• Set speed limits to define maximum safe speed under best conditions, using the internationally accepted "85th percentile" methodology (endorsed by the Institute of Transportation Engineers).
• Build highways such that the right hand lane does not disappear, but that passing lanes require a conscious lane change to enter.  Currently, many passing lanes are the regular lane, and slow drivers must take initiative to change to the right lane.
• Increase length of merge lanes when entering and leaving highways.
• Installation of flexible orange traffic posts at merge locations entering roadways, and where lane entering continues with own lane. This will reduce rapid changing of lanes, rear-end accidents caused by unnecessary yields, etc.

To promote driver courtesy:

• Provide pull-outs along roads with frequent slow moving vehicles, along with signs saying "Impeding vehicles with more than 5 vehicles following must use pull-outs".
• Change all ‘Slower Traffic Keep Right’ signs to ‘Keep Right Except to Pass’, and make appropriate legislative changes required to permit enforcement.

To encourage safety:

• Legislation to replace "Slower traffic keep right" with "Keep right except to pass".
• Ticket unsafe/uncourteous drivers who run red/yellow lights, fail to signal turns and lane changes, turn into the wrong lanes, cut-off other drivers,  impede traffic...
• Enforcement of all infractions typically associated with aggressive or irresponsible behaviour — this will improve the image of the police and reduce perceived driver frustration.
• Programs to specifically target and remove high-risk drug and alcohol drivers from the roads, through interaction with law enforcement officers.
• Legislation requiring that passing occur in the left lanes of a multi-lane roadway.
• Mandatory on the spot breathalyzer tests for all drivers apprehended as a result of a traffic infraction or accident.

To ensure fairness:

• Legislation changes to make speeding a "prima facie" offense, defensible by an engineering study showing an under posted speed limit, or reasonable and prudent for conditions.
• A court enforceable code of conduct for conventional speed enforcement in British Columbia (i.e. a code of ethics) parallel to the code promoted (but not enacted in legislation) for photo radar enforcement.
• Linking of driver penalty point premiums to prior history of at-fault accidents – to reduce the problem of long-distance/professional drivers who accumulate tickets.
• Establishment of an empirical relationship between penalty points and risky driver behaviour.  Penalty points should only be given for behaviour directly linked to accidents.

To enforce as required:

• Removal of driving privileges after having a specified number of at-fault accidents within a specified time range.
• Driver penalty points for 100% at-fault accidents.
• No vehicle should be on the highway without a Vehicle Identification Number. Tighten legislation and enforcement.
• Fines for defeating vehicle safety systems.
• Refusal to sell insurance to vehicle owners who are not licenced to drive said vehicle (for example: many class 5 drivers who purchase motorcycles insure them and continue to ride on our roads without the required class 6 licence). There are no ckecks and balances in the present system to ensure the rider is licenced.

Rev: 1998.10.15