Our roads are packed. Anyone who’s been out and about lately will tell you that summer tourism is in full swing and the volume of traffic on our roadways and highways reflects this.
With this has come some dangerous driving behaviour that puts everyone behind the wheel (or by the roadside) at risk.
We’ve seen two cautionary tales on the Malahat in recent weeks.
In one incident in late May BC Highway Patrol stopped a speeding Ferrari. The driver, a young woman from Alberta, was going 137 km/h. The speed limit was 80 km/h. So this wasn’t a case of a minor quibble or the road safety unit out to make some kind of quota that day, as they are sometimes accused of.
The Ferrari was immediately impounded for seven days.
Then on June 6 BC Highway Patrol reported stopping a driver, again on the Malahat. Turns out this driver was impaired as well as speeding.
The 19-year-old man was clocked going 152 km/h in an 80 km/h zone. Before he was stopped other motorists said they saw him passing other vehicles on the shoulder of the highway and disobeying red lights. His driving so upset other road users that they stopped of their own accord when they saw he had been pulled over and began offering police reports and evidence.
The kicker is that he didn’t even have a valid driver’s licence.
All of which is to say that with our roads being so busy there is no room for dangerous driving. What keeps us all alive is people following the rules to the best of their ability — and even this isn’t 100 per cent protection against a crash.
Something about the summer months seems to have brought out the recklessness in some drivers. These drivers seem to think they don’t have to obey the laws. We bet, if you asked them, they’d say they are great drivers, and criticize other road users for going too slowly and being too cautious. The fact that they take that attitude to public roadways makes it everyone’s problem.
Driving is not a competitive game. It is a cooperative effort and a serious responsibility. So consider taking your speed down a notch. Take a deep breath and back off from the car in front of you so that you’d actually have a prayer of stopping if something unexpected happens up ahead. Have some respect for the neighbourhoods you’re passing through and consider if you want someone speeding past your house.
If you get into a crash, you definitely won’t get there on time.