BC Travel Warning : Speeders BEWARE - BC Highway 3 to Hope
 

...since we have a long weekend coming up and some of you may choose to go on this route. Please exercise caution as it seems like this speed trap is nothing more than a RCMP cash grab.






Travel Warning: BC Speeding Laws and Police Stranding Drivers?

British Columbia’s Excessive Speeding Laws mandate the impoundment of vehicles traveling 40kph/25mph over the limit, and that’s stranding travellers.

For travelers westbound to Hope on BC Highway 3 June 23rd, 2013 the scene played out like a tourist-nightmare reality TV episode. Dozens of vehicles were pulled over and seized by police. In the parking lot of a tourist pull out, a couple with children and two dogs are awaiting one of the stream of tow trucks that are carting vehicles to a seven day impoundment. Another family’s rocket to an extreme speeding violation is that echelon of performance, the first generation Toyota Echo. If British Columbia’s speeding laws are structured to catch and impound extreme speeders and dangerous drivers, then the intent of the law seems lost.

While the couple in the Echo unload all of their weekend luggage and try to arrange some way home, other similar vehicles accumulate in the parking lot, most seem genuinely surprised at being pulled from a herd of similarly flowing traffic. On site a cop of bellicose manner lays into drivers, raging about the dangers of speeding, suggesting to some they are driving like “assholes”. This is not a case of a third world police corruption, cars held hostage until stranded owners and families can bribe them out of impoundment, but instead a sanctioned ensnaring of average drivers in British Columbia.

The local detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have chosen to set up this speed trap at the first passing lane following approximately 15 kilometers of canyon turns, which offers no safe opportunities to pass. The passing lane stretch is a downhill grade, where even the slowest of vehicles then surpass the 80 kph speed limit - or what most American drivers would know as a grindingly slow 49 mph.

Sitting for over an hour and observing police behavior at a tourist pullout mid-way down the passing lane, it’s clear the RCMP are focusing their attention to the start of the passing lane, where drivers initiate a pass. What they are not doing is determining if drivers are returning to the normal flow of traffic after the pass is executed, the moment the driver reaches the excessive threshold of 40kph/25mph over the limit they are considered an excessive speeder. So the context is lost, a normal driver overtakes then slows and merges back into the right lane with the flow of traffic, a speeder, ostensibly the target of the initiative, continues onwards over the limit. Without this context the intent of a driver’s actions is dissected to a couple seconds of examination, and the normal driving behavior of a safely executed pass is criminalized, with a fairly extreme punishment attached.

Scene set, this seems not a trap to catch only dangerous speeders. This is a trap designed to maximize returns at the expense of ordinary drivers, those who want to use the passing lane to pass a motorhome or slow driver that has been backing up traffic, only to have that vehicle accelerate a bit on the downhill straight stretch, near ensuring they are at the threshold of “excessive” speed to perform the pass.

In British Columbia, excessive speeding is now defined as 40kph (25 mph) above the posted maximum. In this case 120kph or 74.5 mph, less than 10 mph above the posted limit on most US highways. What’s clearer is that in many circumstances this law has effectively made passing illegal.

Other violations that could improve the safety and flow of road users are ignored however. In BC, it is illegal for vehicles in the righthand lane to accelerate when being passed, one assumes to prevent this type of scenario. Tellingly none of these law breakers are pulled over, despite their participation in creating a situation requiring correspondingly higher passing speeds. So while passing generally requires a driver to move at 20-30kph faster than the vehicle they are overtaking to perform safely, if the slower moving vehicle now traveling downhill accelerates to 10-20 kph over, not an uncommon occurrence, then passing easily bumps up against or into “excessive” speeds for a brief moment during the pass, a point clearly being capitalized on by police in this setup.

Roadside, there is no legal recourse for these drivers. Some 36km (22 miles) east of the nearest town, Hope, there is no reasoning with the RCMP officers on site.

Claiming the “I’m just following orders” defense, officers on site argue that they have no discretion under BC’s speeding laws. To be clear, the officers claim that the law mandates police impound vehicles traveling 40km/h (25 mph) in excess of the speed limit for seven days. Where police clearly do have discretion the location where speed traps are set up, and which vehicles they “cherry pick” out of traffic. There is also discretion whether the speed trap itself violates the intent of the law by interpreting passers as speeders, provided that is the law’s intent.

No doubt government officials and area RCMP will have been patting themselves on the back for a highly successful initiative against speeding, based solely on offender counts, but the reality is that ordinary drivers are suffering impoundment of their vehicles. This is a case of false positives, an act of entrapment by the provincial government and RCMP effectively engineering a transgression of regular rules of the road. We are all told in our driver instruction books to wait for the passing lane to safely overtake, and for years prior the September 20th, 2010 law, police had reasonable discretion in deciding whether a driver was speeding or not, and drivers were not stranded by roadside impoundments. There was a tacit understanding that making a pass at reasonable speed wouldn’t land drivers a massive ticket or impoundment, that reasonable speed judgement made in context to the circumstance.

This is no longer the case, and now with excessive application of the law comes excessive punishment. Drivers tagged as “excessive” incur the ticket, travel, towing and storage charges - generally amounting to upwards of $2000. Without oversight, checks or balances there is no legal recourse for drivers against this action, and even if they should effectively fight the ticket, there is no escaping the towing or storage charges or inconvenience of being left stranded and without a vehicle for seven days.

For now the vehicular travel situation in British Columbia amounts to a travel warning befitting a corrupt third world regime and police forces. Essentially, passing is illegal here, exceed 40kph/25mph over the posted limit and you risk immediate roadside impoundment with no recourse. More questionable, given the severity of the punishment meted out, and lack of any recourse, is that this scenario does not require any actual evidence, only an officer’s visual estimation.

If you are a vehicular traveler, you may wish to find more civilized places to spend tourism dollars and time without such traveler risks - you can at least negotiate with police in Mexico.




above article MAY relate to this recent case:

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Stra...157/story.html

Andrew Scott is still flabbergasted at what he considers overkill penalties for excessive speeding that left him and his family stranded on the side of a highway without their SUV in the middle of their vacation.

The Delta man, his wife Deanna, and two children, age four and 10, were on their way from Penticton to Chilliwack on Aug. 3 when they were pulled over by cops at a speed trap on Highway 3 east of Hope, near Manning Provincial Park. Scott was caught doing 141 km/h in an 80 km/h zone.

Scott was handed a $360 ticket and police had the family vehicle impounded for a week.

“I was speeding — I absolutely own that,” said Scott. “Fine, ticket me. But don’t put my family on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception while on vacation.”

Scott was ticketed on the first passing lane after a winding 15-kilometre stretch on the highway. Scott said he had been behind a beat-up Volvo with a muffler dragging on the ground and two truck trailers going well below the speed limit and had pulled out and accelerated in order to overtake them.

He was at the “pinnacle of his pass” on a downhill slope and was about to fall back into the right-hand lane and reduce speed when he was clocked by a traffic cop.

As he waited two hours for a tow truck for a ride to Hope, he saw three other cars get pulled over and suffer the same fate.

So far this year, Upper Fraser Valley RCMP have impounded 131 vehicles for excessive speeding in the Skagit Bluffs/Manning Park section of the highway — 104 of them since June.

Scott said he’s all for safety but believes cops should also exercise discretion, noting there was good weather and visibility that day.

He added he has a good driving record — two speeding tickets in 25 years of driving and none for excessive speeding.

“I’m not your prototypical street racer. I’m a family guy on vacation. Don’t put my family on the side of the road like that.”

In total, Scott will have to pay more than $2,000 in fees and insurance premiums. He is happy to pay the ticket, he said, but plans to dispute the impoundment.

Kevin Miklossy also plans to dispute his excessive speeding ticket and $400 towing and impound fees.

A motorcycle journalist, Miklossy has logged more than a half-million clicks on his odometer on various road trips without any incidents. But in June, he was on Highway 3 on his way back to Vancouver after a U.S. road trip when he sped up to pass a slow-moving camper.

The pass took less than five seconds by his count, but when he switched back to the other lane, he got pulled over for doing 130 km/h, his motorbike impounded.

“I was shocked, to say the least,” said Miklossy, 50. “And I had absolutely no ability to fight it whatsoever.”

He said police were being “disingenuous” in setting up a speed trap in that location, where the road slopes downhill and where they know drivers have to speed up in order to pass.

“They were tracking people’s speed at the beginning of the passing lane without making an attempt to see if they slowed down,” he said. “It’s entrapment and creating a false situation where they’re criminalizing passing.”

Police will say drivers can’t exceed the speed limit in order to pass, said Miklossy.

“But my argument is, they should just essentially outlaw all passing lanes in B.C. because it’s virtually impossible to make a safe pass without exceeding the speed limit.”

Miklossy was able to hitch a ride to Vancouver with a friend travelling behind him. The Scotts got a friend from Chilliwack to pick them up from Hope. But some people aren’t as lucky.

Frank Hawkins, a driver with Hope Taxi, said he picks up stranded people from the highway roughly once a week. Fares run from $76 to Hope to a whopping $300 to Vancouver: “I had three of them in the last month.”

John of Hope Towing estimates his company tows 20 to 30 vehicles per traffic blitz. One weekend, it racked up 55 tows.

He said tow truck operators get an earful from irate drivers. But he has limited sympathy for them.

Cops target speeders on the highway because it’s “easy pickings,” but also because the highway is dangerous, said John, who declined to give his last name.

He used to get called out regularly to fatal crashes on a section called Rhododendron Flats, marked by a steep near-90-degree turn.

“I’d rather they get a ticket than a relative having to deal with identifying the body,” he said.

Still, drivers don’t seem to get the message. “There’s more and more, each time they do a roadblock. You’d think word of mouth means people would start slowing down there, but it’s not happening.”

RCMP spokesman Cpl. Peter Thiessen said police only enforce legislation. He said Mounties target that stretch of highway because it is known for serious crashes and fatalities related to speed. His message to motorists is: “Don’t speed, and you won’t get your vehicle impounded.”

In a statement, Superintendent of Motor Vehicles Sam MacLeod said excessive speeding is dangerous and potentially fatal behaviour and he wants to see motorists change their behaviour and take responsibility for their choices behind the wheel.

“We know that vehicle impoundments combined with fines are more effective than fines alone in changing behaviour,” he said.

In B.C. a total of 18,837 vehicles have been impounded due to excessive speeds since impound laws took effect in September 2010, according to the B.C. Justice ministry. In 2012, 6,834 vehicles were taken off the road; 3,589 this year to date.

Micheal Vonn of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said there is at least one complaint she is aware of from angry motorists about impound laws for excessive speeding.

She said “roadside justice” is not an appropriate process and there needs to be a “clear imperative” to seize and impound vehicles by the roadside.

“Essentially, you have no recourse if and when police are wrong,” she said. “You’ve already been punished.”

FUCK reading all that.

My cole notes from skimming through:

Cops set up speed trap
Target the first passing section on the highway
Passing section is on a downhill slope
Wait until you hit 40+ over the speed limit
Impound your car
Strand you there waiting for a tow truck or taxi


PS. Stupid law, dick cops.

<3 you mello

well does one need to go 120 to pass on the highway :suspicious:

The first "article" is a blog post:
Travel Advisory: BC Speeding Laws and Police Stranding Drivers? ? OutDrive.ca

I'd like to know which section they were impounding vehicles. In my experience with RCMP on the Coq and Crowsnest, they usually pull over people that are going well over the limit. Going 140 when the limit is 110, likely, you won't be tagged. Going 140+ in an 80 is begging for it.

I will not say how fast I went on that exact stretch two years ago, but it was impressive for a smart car. We were stuck behind 4 motor homes and crawling under the posted speed limit. Once we hit the DOWNHILL PASSING LANE the motif homes and rv's can easily hit 100+ which is above the posted speed limit.

After passing the rv's we merged back to the right land, but we saw an officer step out into the road. THANK GOD an old Chevy blazer then passed us, and he got flagged over (~160km/h)

What pisses me off is, if police catch you doing 40 over, they impound your car like they have zero choice in the matter. They can give you huge tickets and an ear full, but they all CHOOSE to impound your car and leave you stranded with young children. I will go on record saying I like the police, and almost always support them. But this is fucked
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The Delta man, his wife Deanna, and two children, age four and 10, were on their way from Penticton to Chilliwack on Aug. 3 when they were pulled over by cops at a speed trap on Highway 3 east of Hope, near Manning Provincial Park. Scott was caught doing 141 km/h in an 80 km/h zone.

That guy is a fucking retard

I'm glad a Toyota Echo overloaded with camping gear and passengers that was travelling in excess of 120km/h downhill in an 80km/h zone with overheated brakes proceeding towards another curve in the road was stopped. That's a dangerous driver taken off the road, not revenue collection. The Canyon is a dangerous stretch of highway that people do not respect.

The drivers are doing 120 in an 80 zone on the way to hope. The first passing lane after 15km of tight turns. Not an unreasonable passing speed IMO.

It's shitty, but at the end of the day, people were speeding.

This is nothing compared to cops only pulling you out of the 10 cars that are going at the same speed on the same road.

if the speed limit is 80, and all the cars around you are going 100, and you want to pass, you are risking reaching "excessive" speeds in order to execute the pass. if you need to be travelling 120+ in an 80, in order to pass someone, that is your own fault as you should be well aware of the speed limits and need to ask yourself "why i need to travel at this speed to save myself a few mins of travel time".

Radar Detectors & Laser Jammers ftw :drunk:

Most modern cars can easily travel at 120km/h safely on todays roads. There are too many fucking baby boomer idiots still stuck in the past who make up these laws. When was the last time speed limits were increased on highways? Roads and vehicles have become safer to operate at a higher speed now then ever. My car can easily hit 200km/h when passing 2-3 slow moving cars/semi's. Am I somehow endangering the public because that's what its designed to do?

SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN

it isn't whether the cars can safely travel at those speeds, it is whether the driver can handle a car traveling that fast, and in the case that the driver cannot, the result of a collision from a vehicle traveling 80km and 120km is significant

Yeah but as the article states those cars were only managing the speed limit because of the downhill nature of that stretch, otherwise they were not going the speed limit, which I can relate to since all along highway 97, highway 3, and 99 there are campers and people in shit box's rolling at 80 in a 100 zone.

The other point that needs to be made is that our speed limits along straight stretches are far to fucking low, out past abbotsford, through chilliwack and out to hope should be atleast 110kph.

I got tagged going 149 just past chilliwack, after being stuck behind a semi truck trying to pass campers and other trucks for almost 10km. In most cases the people in the slow lane were going 110 and the truck was goig 115 so it took him a long fucking time to pass them. Finally after being frustrated for so long the truck pulled over I passed him quickly and pulled into the right lane and resumed my cruise control speed of 120.

The cop tagged me just as I had sped up once the semi had moved over, 149kph, only about 25 more than the semi truck. I would argue that one should be far more worried about the fully loaded semi doing 25 over the speed limit than my nimble and capable FX35.

The cop even noted that once I pulled in I slowed down to a very appropriate speed, and he kept asking did I see him, cause he thought thats why I slowed down, I told him the honest to god truth, I had not seen him, even when I pulled to the side I expected him to go past me chasing after someone else.

Instead I was left stranded at the tow yard (which was closed that sunday), waiting with all my stuff for a family member to bring me up to my jobsite in williams lake. The expenses associated with the ticket/impound/insurance premiums, has now cost me more than $2000.

This for an individual who had no prior tickets aside from a failure to display "n" sign ticket from about 5 years earlier.

The new laws are crap, I agree with the article just because you top out at 40 over, does not mean I was speeding excessively. I would be much more worried about the driver who, continues at that speed after he has finished his passing manuever.

My question for you is that if there were no cars in front of you, how fast would you be traveling? You see this even on regular roads all the time, where people pass and change lanes just for the sake of NOT being behind someone, even if the person in front of them is traveling fast or at the same speed they would be traveling.

You said the truck was traveling at 115, and after you passed, you resumed at your cruise speed of 120... why were you so eager to pass if you only planned on traveling about 5km faster than the car you were impatiently trying to clear from?

Lastly, you stated 25 km more than the semi wasn't much faster. Well it is. I am not familiar with the speed limit on that road, but am assuming it is 80? or even 100 at most? IF it was 100, you are going 49 over the limit, which is well clear of the excessive limit.

I won't state my personal opinion regarding what the limits should be, but I will say that when and if I get caught speeding, I would take full responsibility because I am always aware of how fast I am going, and what the speed limits are. Whether you you think it is "fair" or not isn't the issue. Speeding is pretty simple. You either did it, or you didn't. It's the same as rolling through a stop sign. You KNOW you are supposed to stop completely, but you risk it anyways. If you get caught, it's on you. We all have taken our Driver's tests.

Buy helicopter

Problem solved
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But then you are saying the speed limits mean nothing and should be judged on a case to case basis. Ok, but driving isn't a privilege, the world isn't fair, and in order to have order, laws must be invented and adhered to. I understand where you are coming from, but if speeding becomes arbitary because car A is a more capable car then car B, then what is the point of having speed limits? Speed limit is there to stop idiots from going far too fast then what they are safely able to. You know how dangerous some people are...

I have no trouble staying behind a car that is travelling the speed limit. The problem arises when the car in front does not do a constant speed. And the fact that they hog up the fast lane when they aren't even passing.

I drive Hwy 1 (past Hope), Hwy 3, Hwy 5 and Hwy 97 a lot. Honestly, the only highway out of those that's safe for higher speeds is Hwy 5, and that's only once you pass the Snow Shed. Hope-Princeton, Hope-Ashcroft, and Kamloops-Salmon Arm are all twisty roads. Sure, a car in peak operating condition with an alert driver can take those roads without a problem while exceeding the posted speed limit. However, and I'm not going to name names here, but I've seen people on here driving cars that have been modified in such a manner that I wouldn't feel comfortable being anywhere near them on Hwy 1 past Hope, and some of those people are the ones that are often the most vocal about speed limits being too low. Bad camber wear and suspension modified often with the cheapest available parts are the two that scare me the most. That doesn't begin to get into all the unsafe lane changes and tailgating I've seen by modified cars on my constant drives.

I know speed limits are artificially kept low. In fact, I posted a thread a couple years ago with a link to a government report stating that many existing speed limits should either be increased or even abolished all together (in the case of many Northern BC roads), and I agreed with their findings.

However, speed limits are kept at their existing posting for a reason. Take a look at all the cars around you. Are drivers alert and keeping their hands at the 10-2 (or 9-3) position, or are they busy texting their BFF and driving with their knees? Are there screaming children in the backseats possibly distracting the driver? Are the cars overloaded so much that the ass is dragging on the ground? Has that driver been on the road for 8+ hours with nothing more than a piss stop? Are their cars in good condition or do you see a car do the jello wobble everytime it hits a bump in the road?

Speed limits are kept low in order to keep the majority of drivers moving at a safe pace. If you suddenly inflated the limit to 150 on the Coq, you'll have all these distracted drivers suddenly thinking it's safe for them to do such speed. You'll also then have a bunch of drivers thinking it's safe to speed up to 170-180 because that's not reaching the impound limit. The Coq isn't the unrestricted sections of the Autobahn where truck drivers are expected to stay in the slow lane. Imagine a truck driver changing lanes into the left in order to pass a slow moving RV while rounding a corner. He checks his mirrors and see's no one in the left lane. Suddenly a 90's era car comes barrelling around the corner in the left lane and finds himself looking at the ass of a fully loaded trailer going 100. Is that driver going to have the reflexes to properly brake, not to mention will that car be capable of decelerating that quickly?

One other thing to remember is that all of these roads are in the middle of nowhere. It's not like driving on Hwy 1 between Coquitlam and Burnaby. You're in the middle of the wilderness. At any moment a deer, bear or any other number of animals could be either on the road or crossing in front of you. If it's night time and you're doing a buck forty, you're hitting it. Especially on Hwy 1/3, where it's two lanes. You don't have the space to maneuver around it safely, and at night you don't have enough visual distance to brake in time. Sure, a modern car with upgraded brakes might be able to brake in time (provided you haven't fucked around with the front:rear bias in the process), but the majority of cars on the road will not be able to. And the Moose Maneuver? Good luck with that if there's another car in the oncoming lane.

Look, before some of you come out and say, "Oh, I'll bet you've sped before and you'd be lying if you didn't." Sure, I've sped. In fact, I got one police officer's record for the most amount of infractions in one go. However, that was over 10 years ago and I've long since learned where you can safely exceed the limit and where it's unsafe to. I've also learned that I'd rather be on the road for an extra 15-20 minutes over a 4 hour period and get to my destination safely rather than do 140 for half my trip, constantly scanning the side of the road for animals, and half worried I'm going to hit something anyway.

Nothing is worth dying for, especially to prove a point.



Coles notes: Just because a car is capable of x-speed and y-braking distance, it doesn't mean you, the driver is capable of it.

All of this is very true, and yes I simply do not like being behind campers or trucks. I had a empty tractor and trailer in front of me one day going a good clip on the highway saw no reason to pass him, until he hit a bump and his mudflap rolled over his tire and a football sized rock destroyed the front of my car.

Like I said I'm not expecting them to all of a sudden open autobahns all over BC, just increase the speed limit to where most of the rest of the world is at, 110kph especially along the straight stretches of road I mentioned. I mean obviously the canyon roads up to cache creek are not going to be 110.

Also I expect cops to have a little discretion, not impounding every car going 40 over the limit, I mean have a little sympathy about when and how you are stranding someone on the side of the road.

I will give them one thing, I defintely am more mindful of my speed, i cruise at only 35 over the speed limit now...:lawl:

Cause at the end of the day, spew all the excuses you want, I have a BBK, high performance summer tires, and a high end suspension system in my car. I am stopping and out manuevering 90% of the rest of the cars on the road even at a speed 20kph faster.

EDIT:

How come Lomac was able to edit his post without the "this post was edited" non-sense. Just because he is a Mod? that hardly seems fair.

And on that Note I as a driver can be compared to Prost/Senna/Schumacher. So I am at all times capable of much greater speeds thann other drivers.:lawl:

my rule of thumb since these laws have come out is to do no more than 10km/hr in the city and 20-25km/h on the highways. and before this turns into a flame war, im not talking about speeding down residental streets. i do 10 above on roads like king george blvd. in all honesty though, one of the biggest cash grabs is that 50km/h speed limit after you get off the pautallo bridge heading into surrey. its a bloody joke, its so easy to build up speed coming through that stretch.

Great post, thank you.

Saw this on facebook today... It may go well in this thread.....

Current State Maximum Speed Limits in the US

The location they are setting up is fucking retarded, set up down the road a mile or two after the passing lane. If they do that they'll catch the people who passed and didn't slow down, ie: the ones the law is made to target.

The law is what it is and I know since I've gotten older I've slowed down a lot and I'm not proud of some of the dumb shit I've done behind the wheel. I've gotten more then my fair share of the tickets in the past but I rarely speed anymore, well not in my car anyway the motorcycle I may still indulge in the right conditions from time to time.

This is nothing.

When I went up to my cabin 2 months back they had the exact same setup as you climbed up the hills getting into Merrit, it was about 10-25 outside of Merrit and they setup right in the middle
Of a hugeeeee long stretch that your either gaining speed coming up the hill, or gaining going downhill, the corner from both sides is completely blind and as you come around they would
Hit people with the radar and wave them over, there was probably 400-500 feet from either side until you came upon them on the island

I was about 10 over at 120 when I came around and they waived me through they looked like their main goal was simply to tow people because they had 5 tow trucks just sitting idle
And another two loading up cars

This stretch is wayyy easier to speed or pick up speed than that spot on hwy 3 if I'm thinking of the same spot
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