FILE PHOTO - B.C. Transportation Minister Todd Stone watches crew members post a new speed limit sign on the Coquihalla Highway near Kamloops on July 2, 2014.
Image Credit: /Hand out
Image Credit: Ministry of Transportation
November 18, 2019 - 4:50 PM
A new video debunks the reasoning behind a decrease in B.C. speed limits last year.
The 24-minute video called Speed Kills Your Pocketbook 2 – Lying with Statistics was posted on YouTube by SENSE B.C. and was shot by videographer Chris Thompson.
In it, he shows, for example, that claims of traffic collisions rose by 23 per cent between 2013 (before speed limits were raised on many B.C. highways) and 2016 (after they were raised) is misleading.
In 2014 and 2015, the number of accidents dropped significantly, spiked in 2015/16 then dropped again to their lower levels the following year.
The video follows Speed Kills the Pocketbook that Thompson put out in 2013 attacking the government’s enforcement practices in B.C.
“The public in B.C. should be concerned about how the government and news agencies manipulate and misreport statistics, demonize vehicles, and advance the war on drivers while driving continues to become safer,” Thompson said in a news release. “In B.C., 150,000 of 350,000 crashes (42 per cent) each year occur in parking lots. Of the crashes that occur on roads, 59 per cent are in intersections. Yet speeding and stationary cell phone tickets remain the top obsessions of ICBC and police.”
On Nov. 4, 2018, the new NDP government lowered the speed limits on half the roads where they were raised by the Liberal government in 2014.
The change came after a UBC study found crashes had doubled on some of the affected highways, according to a CBC news report.
That study can be seen here.
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