Paul Doroshenko, a lawyer with Acumen Law, and Steve Wallace, a driving instructor and owner of Wallace Driving School, on distracted driving and driver education. David Black, an associate professor at Royal Roads University’s School of Communication and Culture, on social media etiquette in light of critical reaction to Alessia Cara’s Grammy win.
JAN. 30, 2018 Driver education. Social media etiquette. BC Today from CBC Radio British Columbia
From BC Almanac:
Attorney General David Eby has promised changes to ICBC after it was revealed the insurer was facing a $1.3 billion shortfall this fiscal year. While the province consider its options, we want to know how much personal responsibility should drivers take to reduce motor vehicle crashes. We want to hear from you now. Do we need to better educate drivers to reduce those numbers of crashes? Are our current driving tests good enough? What common driving mistakes or bad habits do you often see around the road?
First, as BC prepares to hike fines for distracted driving in March, we’re reminded of ICBC’s message that distracted driving kills more people than impaired driving in our province. Almost always the image used to illustrate distracted driving is someone on their cellphone. Well my next guest says that’s not exactly a fair and accurate picture.
Paul Doroshenko is a lawyer with Acumen Law in Vancouver, and he joined us here in our Vancouver studio earlier today and I began by asking him about his findings when it comes to distracted driving and cellphones.
Paul Doroshenko:
Basically our suspicion was that government was lumping together simple cases of inattention with cases where a cellphone was involved. So we made a freedom of information request for the coroners service to find out just how many people are dying. What is the risk? I’ve been a lawyer for almost two decades and I don’t think I’ve ever had a case where there’s an accident where a cellphone was an issue. I have not seen a case where there’s been a death that’s come through my door.
I was talking to police officers and retired police officers and I found out basically they ticket people at intersections when they pick up their phone and they’re hardly a risk. What we noticed and suspected was the govt was lumping all the stats together to justify cracking down on people with cellphones, which generates revenue. What we found out was that basically – in 2014 there was not a single death from a cellphone in British Columbia. The deaths are maybe one or two a year. And those cases, it’s not people at an intersection picking up their phone.
The government is spinning the case saying something between, depending on which publication, that 78 or 88 people are dying per year to distracted driving. The significant number out of that, what you can take is people who are looking at their radios, distracted by their dog, it’s not an issue of cellphones. It’s not the risk that has been made out.
What we’ve seen in the past few months, we’re probably getting 12 to 15 people phoning us every week now, they received a driving prohibition because they’ve got their second cellphone ticket in a five year period.
BC Almanac: Just to be clear, how concerned are you about distracted driving on the streets?
Paul Doroshenko:
Look, I was driving down Cambie yesterday and I looked over and there was a young man beside me who had his phone in his lap and he was all over the road. That person certainly should be stopped and maybe face a driving prohibition on that one offence.
But it’s the people sitting at the intersection, who hear their phone ring or beep or whatever and they glance at the screen and they end up with that heavy ticket. Those people are not the risk, so I think intuitively—
BC Almanac: What do you mean though those people are not the risk. Is that not the necessary preventative measure to take before we get to the incident itself taking place?
Paul Doroshenko:
I think that’s the best argument the government can make. But first of all, we can see that the risk is not nearly the way it’s been made out. We’re talking about a death a year. And so—
BC Almanac: Are deaths though the way to measure this?
Paul Doroshenko:
You can take deaths, you can take accidents, but 88 is what they’re saying for deaths a year and when you actually look at the statistics there’s two.
Let’s start the discussion based on facts, let’s not lump them all together and mislead the population. Secondly, is it balanced against the risk to be giving people these lengthy driving prohibitions and hitting them so hard for having the cellphone beside them at the intersection?
Because that’s when we’re catching them. There’s tools to catch people who are driving along. If you’ve got a minivan with a couple of officers in them, an undercover van, you can see if people are texting and driving. But hitting people who are sitting int he intersection or in the traffic jam on Cambie street for 20 minutes while they’re trying to get to the office, them having they have their phone sitting beside them on the car seat, is not an appropriate response to the threat.
Listen to the full interview.