Motor vehicle law column by Tim Schewe

A reader writes to me describing an intersection where collisions occur regularly, some resulting in fatalities. He has observed that the opposing left turn lanes in one direction don't line up directly across from each other but are offset by a few feet. The result is that through traffic in one direction is more obscured by standing vehicles than it is in the other. To complicate matters, one direction has a protected left turn signal and the other direction does not.

The reader is sure that this highway design has contributed to collisions at the intersection and he wants to do something about it. He has written to the Ministry of Transportation suggesting that the lanes be repainted so that they line up directly across from each other. The Ministry has declined to do this stating that they would rather wait for the funding to install a protected turn arrow for the other direction.

Ideally, both should be done in the reader's view and he was seeking advice on who to contact to try and effect the changes. He suggested ICBC and I would add the local MLA and city council to the list of people to try and influence. It would not be out of the question to have a service club fund an engineering report to support the request. I expect that could be accomplished without too much expense.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that most people see a traffic cop as someone who writes speeding tickets and fills out collision reports. This is a very narrow view of the job but I did not realize just how narrow it was until I participated in a project to define my job as a front line RCMP traffic constable. Who would have thought that this would take us three days?

Six experienced traffic constables from the four western provinces met at K Division Headquarters in Edmonton and were led in a functional job analysis by Dr. James McGinnis of the Research Branch of Human Resources Directorate of the RCMP. We brainstormed together, trying to list all of the different tasks that we were expected to perform and the knowledge that we required to do them.

The meeting room walls were soon covered with sheets of paper, each listing a single task description. Writing traffic tickets was part of the description, but only after skills and knowledge were applied to determine that the tickets were being written in the right place for the right reasons in order to reduce the behaviours that led to collisions. Incidentally, familiarity with all of the federal and provincial traffic related statutes was a must as well.

Do you ever find yourself wishing that the police were there when another driver does something dangerous around you in traffic? Should you just carry on or is it worth becoming involved? It is up to you to make that initial decision.

When winter weather turned bad suddenly I would often find my shift was a busy one, driving from vehicle to vehicle in the ditch at the side of the road. Of course, we were obligated to check collisions and insure that no one was hurt but in this situation manpower often did not match the number of incidents reported. The situation was made worse by repeated reports of the same vehicle with a different description and location.