Vancouver’s police force hopes that for 2018 it will have to write fewer tickets for drivers caught using their phones on the road.
Sergeant Jason Robillard told
News 1130 that it is too easy to write distracted driving tickets, because they frequently catch motorists looking at their phones.
“Even when I’m out of uniform I see people and I’m sure everybody else does, on their phones when they’re driving whether it’s at a stop sign or at a red light,” he said. “It’s definitely becoming a pretty big problem on the roads.”
The city’s distracted driving problem is so severe, that the force handed out nearly 2,000 tickets during an educational campaign last September.
“I believe we could have written more,” Robillard remarked. “It just solidified the fact that this is a problem and it goes beyond policing and police officers as to how we can reach out with tickets and get people to stop their behaviour. We have to reach out to people and ask them to remind their loved ones at home to put the phone down when you’re driving.”
Robillard believes the increase in distracted driving tickets is due to an uncontrollable obsession some drivers have with their phone.
British Columbia has deemed distracted driving a high-risk behavior, and has announced that as of March 01, 2018, motorists caught more than once in three years using their phones while driving will have to pay as much as $2,000 – $740 more than the current penalty.
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