Advocates say B.C.’s distracted driving rules are confusing, call for a re-write | 24CA News
Is it time for British Columbia to overtake its distracted driving laws for larger readability?
It’s a name some advocates are making within the wake final week’s Lower Mainland distracted driving enforcement blitz — and a slip-up by the province’s personal public insurer in a security video explaining precisely what’s and isn’t authorized when on the highway.
ICBC was pressured to delete the video and apologize, after erroneously suggesting that it was towards the legislation to have a cell phone sitting in a car’s passenger seat. In actuality, it’s authorized to have your cellphone within the passenger seat or elsewhere within the car as long as you aren’t utilizing it.
“It’s long overdue, simply because it’s not written clear enough,” stated Grant Gottgetreau, a former police officer and forensic marketing consultant for site visitors offences. “(When) it was initially written, the intent was so you didn’t have your phone in your hand while you were talking or your phone in your hand while you were texting.
“It morphed from there to being simply in your lap or your cupholder or the seat — even if it wasn’t plugged in, even if it wasn’t on, that was sufficient to get not only a ticket but conviction in court, and that was not the intent of the legislation when it came in.”
B.C. first launched its distracted driving laws in 2009 as a $167 nice.
Since then, it has advanced to a $368 nice and 4 driver penalty factors.
It’s additionally been challenged quite a few instances in court docket, together with over readability points — such because the 2019 R. vs. Partridge case, which overturned a distracted driving conviction and settled the cellphone within the passenger seat difficulty.
But these modifications within the legislation don’t at all times make it to the entrance traces, whether or not it’s ICBC or police, in keeping with Vancouver lawyer Kyla Lee.
“Every step of this is muddled. The police officers aren’t trained on new decisions when they come out, so often if there is a B.C. Supreme Court judgment that says this one thing police officers have been ticketing for is not actually part of the offence, we have to go to court repeatedly, show the decision to multiple officers before the message finally gets out there,” she stated.
“We even see police officers as recently as last week still misstating the law that is more than three years old.”
Lee believes its time for the province to start out from scratch and write a brand new replace to the province’s Motor Vehicle Act that clearly defines what is taken into account an digital gadget, in addition to precisely what drivers are and aren’t permitted to do with them.
She’s even penned her personal model of a re-write and posted it on her web site, half-jokingly providing it as much as the provincial authorities as a draft.
“Right now the way the Motor Vehicle Act is drafted is some things are prohibited in the legislation, some things are prohibited by regulation, some things are allowed by regulation for certain types of drivers, and there’s too many places a person has to look to understand it all,” she stated.
According to ICBC, distracted driving is a consider 40 per cent of police-reported automotive crash accidents, and contributes to a mean of 77 deaths per 12 months.
The public insurer says police in B.C. have handed out greater than 140,000 distracted driving tickets since 2018.
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