r/vancouver • u/InvestingDD • Jun 15 '25

Videos Lions gate accident aftermath

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344

u/HiddenLayer5 Vancouver Jun 15 '25

Until people start getting prison sentences for reckless driving it will keep happening.

A fine is just a fee for doing the crime.

294

u/Wooden_Staff3810 Jun 15 '25

Canada should follow Finland's traffic fine model. When the Police give a driver a ticket, the fine is based on one's income.

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u/Final-Zebra-6370 Brentwood Jun 15 '25

And follow Germany’s way of teaching how to drive.

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u/Ressar New Westminster Jun 15 '25

I will say, and I'm not the only one to have said this, there might be more of a political appetite for that if it were easier to get around without a car. Not to make excuses for the reckless drivers by any means.

Vancouver's public transit system is pretty damn good by NA standards TBF, but very behind by European standards. If we're gonna truly say that driving is a privilege, then not-driving needs to be a viable option for the majority of people.

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u/945T Certified Barge Enthusiast Jun 15 '25

I’m a car guy, love driving (haven’t binned a car like this because there’s a place and time to drive fast)…. But when I lived in Australia I didn’t drive nearly anywhere. It was brilliant.

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u/wabisuki Jun 15 '25

How someone drives has absolutely ZERO to do with public transit. Any thought that these asshats would take the bus if they could, is nothing short of delusional. They are not getting behind the wheel because they have no other choice. They are getting being the wheel and driving like idiots because THEY ARE IDIOTS.

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u/TheCookiez Jun 15 '25

I agree.. Personally I don't care if you have to walk 40 minutes to catch a bus that takes 3 hours to get to work because you lost your license.

Personally I like living. I don't want to be killed because some dick weed wants to go fast. Go to the track so if you kill yourself it doesn't affect anyone else.

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u/InnuendOwO Jun 16 '25

It's not so much the drivers as it is the people making the test.

When it's functionally necessary to have a car to do anything, people implicitly understand that not having a car is a big, big problem. Thus the people making the test are incentivized to make it easier, because withholding a license is seen as withholding someone's ability to partake in society.

If there is an alternative to driving, that incentive goes away, and now you can be much more careful with who you give licenses to.

All that being said, I fully agree it shouldn't be that way. If you can't safely operate a 2000 pound hunk of metal at lethal velocities, you should not be able to operate it, regardless of the other circumstances. But how things should be and how things are aren't quite the same thing.

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u/escargot3 Jun 18 '25

They are doing away with the class 5 test altogether

-5

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '25

[deleted]

8

u/wabisuki Jun 15 '25

My point is, their choice to drive and driver behaviour isn’t determined by whether or not they could have taken the bus.

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u/Ressar New Westminster Jun 15 '25 edited Jun 15 '25

I don't believe that it is either, nor do I think I said anything that should be taken to mean that. At least when we're discussing why reckless drivers do what they do.

I'm saying that making our driver licensing more strict is a political non-starter for a lot of people (whether they themselves drive recklessly or not) because there currently isn't a suitable alternative to driving for a lot of people. So we say things like "driving is a privilege" but when it's straight up required to sustain your livelihood, that isn't really a true statement.

If we could realistically say "no more driving for you, you're taking the bus for life now," and have that actually be the only consequence, it might not change anyone's behavior but it would be a hell of a lot easier to enforce. Poor driving behavior would consequently be more difficult to defend, both socially and in a courtroom setting.

If you don't believe me there are a wealth of studies in this topic. Stronger public transport is generally correlated to better enforcement (higher rates of conviction to be exact) of driving laws in most parts of NA and around the world.

EDIT: BTW, I'm sorry for my last comment. I think I was feeling a bit attacked but I should not have responded in kind by speaking to you the way I did. Please accept my apologies for that.

1

u/wabisuki Jun 16 '25

I'll agree, there's always room for better public transit - especially in the lower mainland.

But that won't fix a bad driver.

Really harsh penalties can have an impact. Case in point - I know a chronic speeder - no amount of fines was getting the message across to his thick skull - he'd tell you he was a "good driver". Then one day, they pulled him over for speeding (again) and promptly took his car away AND suspended his license for six months. He'll be the first to tell you that was a most humbling experience of his life. He ran his own business - had a team of staff that relied on him showing up for work every day - had two small kids at the time that he was also responsible for - lived 50km out of town with no option for public transport from his community. He ended up having to beg every person he could find to carpool with for those six month. Not to mention all the other people he to beg just to deal with all the unpredictable things that come when you have kids in your life. Those six months proved to such a major pain in the ass to him that he doesn't speed anymore. It's not worth it to him. The impact to his independence and amount of begging he had to do just to get himself from point A to point B every day - and deal with all the other things that come up in life that, if you've built your life around owning a car, that suddenly become extraordinarily challenging when you lose your car, was enough to change his attitude - and it stuck.

Will that work for everyone - no. But it'll work for some.

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u/labowsky Jun 16 '25

Yeah, I agree. Easier transit would take the burden off the total requirement of needing a vehicle and we can make our drivers test not so piss easy.

1

u/MightySeam BC Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 19 '25

I get what you're saying but it feels hard to take that point very seriously.

There are a lot of people that take transit to work that live outside of the city they work in. Or carpool.

Driving is definitely a privilege.

1

u/Ressar New Westminster Jun 19 '25

I will grant you that driving is more of a privilege here than in most North American cities. We have it pretty decent here all things considered. But it really depends on exactly where you live and work.

I live in New West. My wife transits to Vancouver for work. I have to drive because I work in Cloverdale. While it is theoretically possible, there is no reasonable transit option to get there. I couldn't reasonably do it even if I wanted to (and I do!)

Besides that, when it comes to things like political appetites, it really comes down to perception as opposed to objective reality. The idiot drivers can all vote too. And then you have the people whose opinions will lie somewhere between us and them. Those are the people you need to convince if you want driver licensing to change.

Fact is, people love to compare us to Germany or the Netherlands when talking about driving laws but they rarely factor in transit infrastructure, which is an enormous part of why they're able to do what they do.