Road Rules

As the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) latest published review of the current state of knowledge of driver distraction (April 2008) so aptly puts it, “Cell phones are the contemporary icon of driver distraction.”  What the review tells us, however, is that distraction is difficult to define, difficult (if not impossible) to measure, and that cell phones are only one of many distractions—which is not to deny that they are a big problem, likely even a bigger problem than other common in-vehicle tasks involving as they do “a relatively extended period of exposure” engaging both cognition and emotions.

There is so much detail in the upcoming legislation (January 2010?) prohibiting the use of cell phones, portable electronic devices and text messaging while driving, that Road Rules recommends taking the time to read and listen to the various articles and broadcasts about them.

For many years the Volvo car brand, more so than any other, was synonymous with safety.  Assar Gabrielsson and Gustav Larson, Volvo’s founders, set out to make it so, saying in 1927, the year the first Volvo came off the assembly line, "Cars are driven by people. The guiding principle behind everything we make at Volvo, therefore, is and must remain, safety."

In the morning of September 25th, 2009, a Honda SUV driven by a 29-year-old driver struck a 23-year-old flag person or ‘flagger’ working in the 7200-block of the Ladner Trunk Road for her employer, Mainland Civil Works Ltd.

On September 9^th, 2009, legal precedent was set in a Quebec courtroom when Judge Michel Mercier sentenced Roger Walsh, 57, to life in prison.  Walsh had pleaded guilty to impaired driving causing death, having struck and killed Anee Khudaverdian, 47, a wheelchair-bound woman while she was out walking her dog.  Reportedly, Walsh's blood-alcohol level was over twice the legal limit, he was driving his wife's vehicle without her permission, and he fled the scene.  This was his nineteenth impaired driving conviction.