From Global BC:
Are governments, ICBC and even the police exaggerating the dangers of distracted driving? A Richmond company says its Freedom of Information request has revealed far fewer deaths due to drivers using cellphones behind the wheel than officials claim. Ted Chernecki reports:
Most of us have seen those intersection crackdowns on motorists suspected of using their cellphones while driving. You’ll see one officer here a West Van corporal, now retired, who at the time asked himself what was he doing here, really?
Grant Gottegetreu:
We’ve been told as traffic officers and police officers, it’s cellphones, right from the brass on down they’re saying get those electronic device tickets. Those are the ones killing people. But that’s coming from government, that’s not fact based.
So he had a freedom of information request made to the Coroners Service. It could only say there are on average about two deaths a year due to distraction from an electronic device, yet ICBC routinely reports there are 88 distracted driving deaths every year.
Paul Doroshenko:
The numbers for distracted driving are significant. The numbers for cellphones are almost insignificant. But they put them together and then they tell us that the threat is cellphones. Obviously that’s misleading because the cellphones are barely a threat.
For fatalities. But they do cost a lot of fender benders. ICBC reports that 43,000 distracted tickets were handed out in 2016 alone. 300,000 since 2010. The vast majority to cellphone users.
Grant Gottgetreu:
We would just stand where we’re standing right now. someone would pull up to a red light, the second they picked their phone up and looked at it. Boom. They got the ticket. Well those people aren’t killing anybody. No one has died as a result of sitting at an intersection looking at their cellphone and putting it down. It’s the people that are physically talking. But even the people that are physically talking or texting while they’re driving, the stats say two a year on average since 2010. Not the huge numbers that ICBC is telling us.
Nobody disputes the fact that handheld phones are dangerous while driving. But the point here is far too much effort is focused on cellphones clearly there are many other more dangerous distractions.
Story starts at 4:08