There is a big difference between Prairie snow and West Coast snow.
Prairie snow is fluffy, dry and fairly easy to drive in. Unless, of course, the weather plummets to -28 C with relentless wind resulting in limited visibility like it was today in Calgary, Alberta. In that case it’s the rest of Mother Nature’s fury you have to deal with.
Then there is West Coast snow.
The blankets of white are gorgeous for about 24 hours before the tinges and splashes of grey slush take over. Our snow, at least down near sea level, is heavy, wet and slippery. It’s hell to drive in and wrecks havoc when temperatures drop below zero turning everything into an Olympic size skating rink.
Vancouver drivers tend to be the laughing stock of Canada when it snows. Prairie folk and those from out East poke fun at our inability to drive in only one centimeter of the white stuff. Yes, a lot of drivers need to slow down when it snows, and just because a person is behind the wheel of a four wheel drive or an all wheel drive vehicle does not make them immune to slipping and sliding all over the road. But it’s not just the drivers, it’s the snow!
Our snow is like the evil little step-child of the Canadian snow family – at first glance it’s pretty in all it’s sparkling splendor, but before you can say, “How charming!” the evil little step-child has turned the road beneath your wheels into a merry-go-round with no way for you to get off the ride.
Today saw the first snowfall of the season and I woke to a snow-covered neighborhood. The road in front of our house was packed solid. My truck’s four wheel drive and appropriate tires came in handy, but I still putted down the street knowing I could end up in the ditch if I wasn’t careful.
Remember the stop sign by my house? You’ll never guess what happened there this afternoon.
If I was a game show host and your guess was ‘an accident’, you would be going home a winner. Someone was going too fast, couldn’t stop at the stop sign, slid through the intersection and t-boned a neighbour of ours. No one was hurt but both vehicles sustained significant damage and had to be towed away.
So please, forget about our Prairie and East Coast friends laughing at us. Because really, they can’t laugh at our inability to drive in this snow until they’ve come out here and tried it themselves.
Just slow down, ensure your vehicle is properly equipped for winter driving, take your corners with care, watch out for pedestrians forced into the roadway by snowed-in sidewalks, don’t slam on the brakes at the top of a snow covered hill and take extra time to get to your destination.
With a little patience and a lot of care we will all get to where we need to go.
Today I joined the team of writers over in the Driving Section of The Vancouver Sun newspaper, where the Friday edition will include various traffic related posts from Behind the Blue Line.
Many thanks to editor Keith Morgan for the wonderful opportunity, and to the rest of the team for being so welcoming.
Now I’m off to negotiate my way through the stop sign near my home in an effort to get some errands done…wish me luck.
Thanks for reading!
Sandra
As I said in the post Honest Scrap, I really do think I’m a decent driver.
Not for the fact that I’ve been driving for along time, but for the fact much of that driving is done at high speed, through heavy traffic, with lights flashing and siren blasting, around those who do not know what it is to yield to an emergency vehicle, and all the while processing information about the emergency call I have been dispatched to.
All without losing my cool and causing or being involved in an accident, and with arriving at my destination being able to deal with whatever situation the 911 call center has seen fit to throw my way.
For all the ‘crazy’ driving at work, I’m relatively serene on my days off when behind the wheel.
I obey the ‘yield to car on right’ at four way stops, I merge well, I slow down to 30 kms/hr in school zones, and I wave a ‘thankyou’ when another driver goes out of their way to make driving a more pleasant experience.
But there is one intersection only a few blocks away from our home. An intersection my family goes through every single day, most days more than once, and one that severely threatens the serenity of my off-duty driving.
The east/west street has the right of way. The north/south street has stop signs where it intersects the east/west street, meaning everyone approaching the intersection while driving north or south has to stop. The southbound drivers have got this figured out, likely because the area on that side of the intersection is home to only twenty houses.
The northbound drivers, as far as I’m concerned, need a swift kick in the butt.
Without exception, almost all northbound drivers do not stop until they are well into the intersection and signalling their westbound turn. It is so bad that now, when approaching the intersection on the east/west right-of-way, I slow to crawl and creep through to avoid a collision. With clock work regularity, I have to make an abrupt stop to allow a peson through who has not stopped for their stop sign.
It’s infuriating.
Citizens in the area have complained to City planning (I don’t live in Vancouver, so don’t go giving them a hard time), have asked for stepped-up police enforcement, and have requested that the intersection be turned into a four-way-stop. While we have seen a few cruisers monitoring the intersection on an intermitent basis, residents have been told a four-way-stop is not practical as our intersection is too close to another intersection.
But I digress…
Road safety is paramount. Stop at your stop signs. Yield to on-coming traffic. Be courteous as it will likely make someone’s day – probably your own.
Let me paint the picture:
- You are driving on a two lane highway, with one lane going in each direction.
- No passing is allowed due to the turns and hills on the roadway – think of the Sea to Sky highway, or Hwy’s 3 and 5 to BC’s Interior.
- The speed limit is 80 kms/hr, or 60 kms/hr, or 100 kms/hr. The actual speed isn’t the issue.
- You are behind another driver who is travelling well below the posted limit for some unknown reason. Maybe the driver is not familiar with the road, or is a new driver, or has poor eyesight. Again, the reason for the slow driving isn’t the issue.
- The road ahead of you opens up with a passing lane, with clearly marked signs that state SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT, followed by another sign that states STAY RIGHT EXCEPT TO PASS.
- Your foot itches on the accelerator as you wait for the driver in front of you to pull to the right and allow you to pass. A quick peek in your rearview mirror shows a long line of cars behind you waiting for the same opportunity.
- Much to your dismay, the driver in front of you finds a sudden burst of confidence at the open road and floors it. I mean, really floors it, and races forward in the left lane. To try and pass the car now would mean passing on the right (not a good idea) and would mean driving like an idiot to pass him.
- Then, as your opportunity to pass dwindles with the end of the passing lane in sight, you are again stuck behind the slowpoke as he drastically drops his speed when the road closes in again.
I’m not sure about you, but this has happened to our family on several occasions. Not only is such driving behaviour dangerous, it frustrates other drivers. There are various traffic laws and statutes that can deal with this, but I’ve been trying to figure out why this happens in the first place.
Maybe if I can understand why I will be better able to educate drivers on safe practices.
Have there been any studies on this? Has anyone made a point of examining the driving mentality of people who do this? Is it something as simple as our competitive nature to not want to give up the lead even if we are poor leaders (wow – that last line works on a whole bunch of different levels, doesn’t it? But I digress…sounds like a topic for another post…).
If you know of any studies on this, would you please email me or leave a comment with the link?
Let me clarify that I’m not much of a traffic cop. Even though I pull many people over, I don’t write many tickets. Giving warnings is more my style.
A couple of weeks ago, in the late evening, I had to squint against the oncoming high-beams of an approaching car. When the car failed to switch the beams from high to low after repeated flashing of my own lights, I made a u-turn and pulled the motorist over.
The driver was a woman (let’s not get into any jokes about female drivers, okay? Remember I’m a female driver, too 
). She was very friendly and polite, but genuinely confused as to why I had pulled her over. When I tried explaining about the high-beams, I knew she had no clue what I was talking about by the blank stare she was giving her dashboard. Her hand reached out and plucked at the headlights lever, but all she succeeded in doing was turning the headlights off.
I pointed to the bright blue light in her instrument panel and told her what it was.
She still didn’t understand.
Then I had her turn her lights back on and reached my own hand into the car and toggled the switch back and forth while telling her to watch the blue light. On-off-on-off.
She nodded.
Then I told her to look out of her windshield to see how the angle of the light coming from her headlights changed. High-low-high-low.
This time, she gasped and smiled.
“So that’s what that light means!” she said, clearly happy that I had solved the mystery of the blue light.
When I told her that by driving around the city with her high-beams on she was likely blinding cars coming towards her, she was very apologetic, saying she had never known what the light was for, and hadn’t really given it any thought. I gave her a quick lesson on when high-beam use is appropriate, told her to have a safe night, and sent her on her way.
Sans ticket.
It’s a beautiful long weekend, and it’s the first time in the last few years where the Victoria Day holiday has not been plagued with rain. The streets, markets, parks and campgrounds are filled with people taking advantage of the sunny skies and welcoming the unofficial start to summer.
But it’s not all roses. Every year there are a multitude of car accidents throughout the province, and a few unlucky souls get killed. I’ve not watched the news today, so I’m not sure if we’ve had any fatalities, but as of 0600 hrs this morning when I got home from night shift we were still looking good.
Here’s what brings me to the title for this post. On Friday, as I was driving around getting ready to head in to work, I noticed most people were already in holiday mode and had left their usual driving etiquette at home:
- People talking on cell phones and weaving in their lanes
- One fellow behind the wheel of a tractor trailer looking as if he were texting on his phone and not paying attention to the fact he was straddling the center line
- Another person driving at 60 kms/hr in the fast lane on the highway with all the other motorists trying to jockey around him. All of this adds up to bad driving ‘ju-ju’.
The bad driving was not contained to the highway either – going through town was like playing ‘Frogger’, and I was on high alert to just get home from the grocery store. It was absolutely incredible, and I don’t recall ever being so aware of all the people driving as if on a trip through La La Land.
Then, during my shift last night, I pulled over more people than usual. Some were called into 911 as suspected impaired drivers, but most were just distracted. Or tired. Like the woman who fell asleep behind the wheel of her minivan while stopped at a red light. I drove past her on the way to an unrelated call (I didn’t realize she was asleep at the time), and she was still there five minutes later when I returned. She was slumped over, leaning against the driver’s side window, having a little nappy-poo. Apparently jet lag can do that to a person.
So please, if you are out on the roads for the remainder of the weekend, pay attention! Apparently it’s not your driving you have to be worried about, but the driving habits of others.
This weekend it pays to have had a course in defensive driving…
As everyone gears up for the holiday rush, I beg you to please slow down while driving in parking lots! I braved a local mall earlier today and was just about mowed down by a woman racing for a prime parking spot. She was on a cell phone to boot, so I’m not sure she even saw me. But I digress – I promised myself this blog would not turn into a rant, so back to business…
Last Saturday, Dec. 6th, members of the Vancouver Police Citizen’s Academy were awarded their certificates after completing a six week course meant to build bridges between the VPD and the community. I had the opportunity to meet the group the day before when I gave a presentation on the Dog Squad, and I was very impressed with the participants. They were all interested citizens who wanted to better educate themselves on what it is the VPD does, and by the end of the course, they had been given an inside look into the department.
Then, yesterday, twenty-nine men and women became the newest officers with Academy Class #126 of the Vancouver Police Department when they were sworn in at a ceremony presided over by Chief Constable Jim Chu. Here’s a big welcome to all the new officers.
Yesterday I heard a quote from Vivian Stringer, the head coach of the Rugers University women’s basketball team (no, I did not meet her personally, even though I would very much like to – I saw her interviewed on television), and even though her statement was directed at her basketball team, it is a quote that all of us, particularly new police recruits, would do well to listen to:
‘Life is about being ready.’ – Vivian Stringer
Have a good weekend, everyone. Stay safe.
Sandra
