DriveSmartBC - Trade Your Ticket for Driver Training
 

"You don't care about safety! All you guys want to do is suck money out of my pocket!" Here was a speeder that was very definite in his opinion and not afraid to state it. He was wrong, I did care about safety, but my traffic cop toolbox didn't contain many officially sanctioned options for dealing with it.

Knowing that I was about to retire, I thought to myself "What are they going to do, fire me?" So I wrote the ticket and after I had served it I told the driver that I had a deal for him. Spend the cost of the ticket on himself at the driving school of his choice, bring me the receipt and I would run the ticket through the shredder.

He took the deal and returned to the detachment within a couple of weeks with the receipt. He said that he had learned that he was not shoulder checking properly, failed to turn out of and into the correct lane at intersections and wasn't coming to a proper stop at stop signs. I handed him all copies of the ticket and told him that he could do what he wished with them.

Personally, I thought that this neatly filled the commitment to the goals of Road Safety Vision 2010's education element. This driver and those around him benefited far more from the driving school's advice than he would have learned from paying the $138 for speeding. Of course, he could have chosen to treat the ticket in the usual manner by payment or dispute but I think we were both pleased with this outcome.

Reference Links

Personally I think this is an awesome idea which could lead to better education of drivers on the road.

I think that was an excellent deal. I wish all officers will offer it - knock on wood, I havent been pulled over yet.

Oh wow. This is what the system should be doing. Providing alternatives instead of simply grabbing cash.

Most people just think of tickets as a "driving tax" instead of an opportunity to improve their road habits. If they made a bill for this, I'd imagine the quality of drivers out there would go WAY up.

Props to Skidmark. :D

Great idea for most drivers that get ticketed. There are lots of people who have not had their driving properly critiqued since their road test decades ago. A reminder by someone other than their spouse or children would be beneficial.

good idea until rich c-lais just pay off the driving school

So Skid, did Norm approve ? :)

I wrote a bit about the background to this as a follow up to the article on my web site. You can read that by clicking Reference Links in the original post and looking at the comments. My take on it is that he approved, but no one else was excited enough about the idea to carry it through.

^ Maybe I'm just pessimistic or cynical, but I'd imagine that the government/police wouldn't be too fond of any move that potentially means less revenue for them.

Not meant as a comparison, but it reminds me of that police chief in DC who was angry that someone posted all their speed trap locations online. People did indeed slow down, but of course we all know that also meant her officers didn't get to eat as often.

c-lais need this!

Nice initiative.

I don't think that this is the case here. After all, Crown said go ahead, it's just that it would have to be done BC wide. That was likely the problem and I'm guessing that the RCMP Traffic Services didn't think it was a good enough idea to justify the work that it would have taken to implement.

Your argument falls apart a little when we look at radar detectors. Their only purpose in life is to help drivers avoid traffic tickets for speeding. If your revenue point was true, one would think that the government would have banned them long ago.

Props Skidmark! Thats an awesome idea and I wish they would implement it, or make some sort of legislation where you can actually assign drivers training instead of giving them the option (as is give them a 2-hours drivers training ticket instead of a 170 dollar fine) It would do everyone on the roads a huge favour

I would guess that very few people use radar detectors and their impact on revenue generation for the province is minimal.

I'm also sure that you stopped many people for speeding who were using radar detectors which obviously failed to prevent them from getting a speeding ticket.

Thank you for giving that driver an oppertunity to better his driving habits. Speed enforcement only targets and corrects a very small component of bad driving. The driver you referred to learned many things about his poor driving that would do much more to make him an overall safer driver than simply not exceeding the posted speed limit.

Not only was he not aware of the rules he was breaking on a daily basis, he likely did not know to look out for other drivers who were also regularly breaking those rules and putting him in danger.

If you think about fines vs what Skidmark did.. there is no Pro's to fines. I wish it was like this for all offensives. It would stimulate some economic activity for driving schools too.

good and bad,

that kid probably just had someone he knows work at a driving school, got them to make a fake receipt, and just spewed some bullshit to you to get you off his back,

its like the same thing as VI's, just gotta pay someone under the table to get it erased for you.

QFT, but too bad our system is all about penalizing instead of offering alternatives. Look at how the City of Vancouver somehow thinks that cranking street pricing rates/hours and building fewer spots on the road is going to somehow get people out of cars. Personally, I'm just going to start eating in Richmond (which means a farther drive) instead of downtown. The Law of Unintended Consequences.

The same goes for speed limits that are set below well below the 85th percentile. People buy radar detectors, and speed when they don't think there's a cop around. Cops can't possibly catch everyone, so..
95% of the population doesn't have this kind of connection, so even if 5% pay someone off, that's still a whole lot better than having a whole bunch of drivers pay a ticket but then still have bad habits.

You live in a different world than most of us here I hope? In my world most drivers would take the gift of a second chance without spitting in the donor's face...and would get their car inspected to make sure it was safe and legal...or at leats to prevent a further inspection, tickets and a tow job for a non-compliant vehicle...but then I have run into a very small number of drivers who did like you said. The suffered the full consequences.,

If "the system" (including ICBC) admitted that this was a valid and helpful idea, they'd then have to admit that subsidized, mandatory driver training in high schools might actually be a valid and helpful idea... and as we've seen before, ICBC's official position on this is that it DOESN'T help people become better drivers.

You see, skidmark, ICBC thinks you're wrong about driver education. This experience is obviously an anomaly... :rolleyes:

The fact that this isn't policy proves that tickets really are just a cash grab. Thanks for the effort Skidmark, but it's all in vain.

Awesome idea.

I really do hope it'll come true one day.

A lot of times we learn to drive in a way so that we don't crash or get crashed into, but that has more to do with social skills/understanding the flow of traffic than knowing what you SHOULD do in any given situation.

Re-reading the books / watching some car crash videos will definitely help jog their memories. Especially in emergency situations that we are not faced with everyday.