When a driver attempts to pass on the highway, the driver being passed often increases speed, usually unconsciously. Pandemic stress might be compounding this behaviour, writes Steve Wallace. ADRIAN LAM, TIMES COLONIST As the pandemic drags on, motor vehicle drivers and their passengers, along with people using all other modes of transportation, seem to be more stressed and less tolerant. As far as most of us are concerned, it cannot end soon enough. The longer it goes, the weirder some human behaviours become. Psychologists have known about a tendency for people to take longer doing various activities when they are aware of others waiting for them to complete. If a person getting ready to leave a parking space is aware of another patiently waiting for the space, the exiting driver takes more time to leave the coveted space. The same thing happens when a driver is waiting for another to leave a gas pump. It takes longer for the filler-upper to exit when the pump is in demand tha
ICBC shouldnt allow people to book road tests outside their own jurisdiction, Steve Wallace writes. DARREN STONE, TIMES COLONIST Sometimes the obvious is treated as the less than obvious. One such example is that people from all over B.C. are coming to Vancouver Island in order to get a timely road test appointment. This in the time of a pandemic! ICBC should act immediately to end the practice of road test appointments being offered to those not from the community in which the test is taking place. Why are student drivers from Surrey, Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Abbotsford and other areas showing up on Vancouver Island for a road test? Isn’t this a violation of Dr. Bonnie Henry’s edict to stay in one’s defined locale? Minister of Health Adrian Dix must act immediately to stop this practice. In other words, those people from Vancouver seeking a road test must book a driving test where they live, not hundreds of kilometres away.