7141 replies to this topic

[sebberry]

Was there a scumbag driving it?

 

I didn't think to wave him down to ask...

[HB]

Good chance of a slope failure and falling trees on Malahat Drive in the next couple days.

Hopefully no cars get hit but that's wishful thinking

The scariest section to be driving through when the ground is saturated like this

is from Goldstream to Tunnel Hill.

 

http://youtu.be/NWNem5G0m34

[rjag]

Yup we drove through there on Tuesday afternoon and our windshield got nailed with a slushbomb falling from a tree. I honestly thought the windshield had smashed as it made a huge BOOM and the whole glass was covered. Loads of busted branches on the UVic trails and around our neighbourhhod

[Baro]

Damn glad I don't have any life or death reasons forcing me to drive the Malahat these days.

[Bingo]

A two-car crash shut down the Patricia Bay Highway just north of McKenzie Avenue on Friday.

Saanich police told CHEK News that a southbound vehicle crossed the median and collided head-on with another vehicle just before 6 p.m.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

- See more at: http://www.timescolo...h.Txi9wCeB.dpuf

[HB]

http://youtu.be/R21ouUGLyCU

[UDeMan]

From Check 6 news today

 

http://www.cheknews....highway-283157/

[Coreyburger]

http://youtu.be/R21ouUGLyCU

 

Ugh, so many bad decisions by the cops on this one.

[nagel]

I'm kinda surprised I wasn't in that video.

[sebberry]

Ugh, so many bad decisions by the cops on this one.

 

Par for the course for IRSU. 

[VicHockeyFan]

Ugh, so many bad decisions by the cops on this one.

 

And to think, these are the "traffic safety" guys.

[Bingo]

And to think, these are the "traffic safety" guys.

 

They were at that same location a week ago with their spotting scope, looking for drivers on cell phones.

[HB]

That's what they were doing yesterday . They had a guy standing on the bridge watching people go by then would call ahead to these guys. These guys also were standing behind the traffic signal box with a spotting scope as well

 

the only good thing about it from a police perspective was the guy on the bridge has visual continuity with the vehicles from the time he saw them until they were stopped down the road.

this is very important in court so that he can say Yes your honour the car I saw was the one they pulled over I never lost sight of it

 

On the Malahat its a different story.

They have a guy on the 4 lanes straight stretch hiding in the bushes about 1 km away who then calls out offenses to the line of cop cars around the corner on tunnel hill. I have listened to them on the scanner and many times he is calling out the colour of the car or the colour and what it is following. There is NO continuity so in fact the car that gets stopped is being stopped on colour alone at times. The driver gets a ticket but the driver never saw the cop hiding in the bush so would never know how he was picked out and that it may not even be him that was the offending driver. It would not hold up in court. Sometimes however the cop is able to get a license plate number

They play by their own set of rules at times without regard for laws or common decency.

[Gipper]

That's what they were doing yesterday . They had a guy standing on the bridge watching people go by then would call ahead to these guys. These guys also were standing behind the traffic signal box with a spotting scope as well

the only good thing about it from a police perspective was the guy on the bridge has visual continuity with the vehicles from the time he saw them until they were stopped down the road.
this is very important in court so that he can say Yes your honour the car I saw was the one they pulled over I never lost sight of it

On the Malahat its a different story.
They have a guy on the 4 lanes straight stretch hiding in the bushes about 1 km away who then calls out offenses to the line of cop cars around the corner on tunnel hill. I have listened to them on the scanner and many times he is calling out the colour of the car or the colour and what it is following. There is NO continuity so in fact the car that gets stopped is being stopped on colour alone at times. The driver gets a ticket but the driver never saw the cop hiding in the bush so would never know how he was picked out and that it may not even be him that was the offending driver. It would not hold up in court. Sometimes however the cop is able to get a license plate number
They play by their own set of rules at times without regard for laws or common decency.

There's nothing unlawful about what you have described. The evidence is weaker than a continuous view but other factors may get the ticket upheld, such as a roadside confession, details of traffic density, etc. Both officers involved will make notes with significantly more detail than what you hear over the radio. The spotter call is the key to give the other officer "reasonable grounds to believe" an offense has been committed and is abbreviated in the interest of brevity. Further observations as detailed in notes may get the ticket over the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard for a court conviction.

[sebberry]

Inability to accurately describe a vehicle's make/model/colour/body style should also come into play. 

[Gipper]

Inability to accurately describe a vehicle's make/model/colour/body style should also come into play.

It may come into play but other factors could save the ticket.

[sebberry]

To your knowledge, how often are recordings of the radio chatter retrieved for presentation in traffic court?

[Mike K.]

You can hear some pretty zany things on the scanner when these traffic blitzes are going down. There was a case late last year when a spotter identified a vehicle and said its driver was using a hand held device. After an extensive chat with the driver, a of the vehicle's driver area, a heated and animated exchange over the radio where the spotter insisted he wasn't wrong, it eventually turned out the man had been holding his wallet and as he passed below a pedestrian overpass he'd been spotted. The spotter identified the colour, brown, but the man's phone was a different colour and not easily mistakable for the wallet.

The exchange was an epic waste of time, but that aside and obviously the bigger picture being traffic safety, the fact that the spotter kept insisting for the cop at the scene to keep searching because he was certain he had seen a phone was a bit alarming. This guy wasn't taking no for an answer but eventually the cop at the scene put an end to it.

I personally wish we'd focus more on tailgating and aggressive driving. Send undercover cars into traffic all day long for all I care, but let's actually make a difference by getting those people off the road or at least warned about their actions.

[shoeflack]

I can accept being parked in the bike lane in the video. Sometimes there's no where else to go, and cyclists should be aware of how to merge into traffic. No it's not perfect, no it shouldn't be regular practice, but I can tolerate it.

 

But the SUV parked on the sidewalk. That is idiotic. Look at the other side of the road. The construction fencing has left that sidewalk essentially unusable to folks in a wheelchair or walker. And now this office has made the sidewalk on his side of the road unusable to those same folks. Dumb decision there.

 

HB, I'm surprised you didn't say anything to them.

[VicHockeyFan]

I was standing on a corner waiting for the light and a guy drove by eating a salad out of a bowl, with fork and all.  Neat.