When the police aren’t watching

Years ago, I used to have a good laugh about news stories that would laud this province’s population for its high rate of seatbelt use — especially because the percentages of seatbelt users were measured just after you passed a sign on the side of the road warning about the “Seatbelt Check Ahead.” And, after passing the checkpoint, you could watch the arms flying as people in the oncoming lane belted up.

It felt like bad science — at the very least, juicing the results to get the best marks we could.

Last week, the RCMP gave a little advanced warning as to what they’d be doing for Canada Road Safety Week, telling drivers the police would be taking part in “an annual collaborative effort by Canadian police services to proactively enforce the laws that govern high risk activities of road users. … The RCMP throughout the province will be conducting traffic stops and check-points throughout the week. As well, the public can expect increased police visibility on our roadways as we focus on making our roadways safer.” And they did.

This week, they outlined their results, saying that, despite the advance warning, they’d chalked up 1,170 charges against drivers.

Here’s the breakdown: “Impaired by Alcohol — 12, Impaired by Drug — 1, Roadside Suspensions — 6, Speeding — 743, Aggressive Driving — 74, Seat Belts — 48, Distracted Driving — 17, Fail to Yield — 4, Other Provincial Traffic — 207, Careless Driving — 16, Prohibited Driving (Criminal Code) — 6, Other Criminal Code — 10, Unsafe Lane Change — 4, Pass on Right — 1, No Insurance — 21.”

It’s an impressive list, and that’s only the RCMP.

But if those are the charges we know about when the police are focusing on the road, what’s going on with our highways and secondary roads when the police aren’t making that special effort?

The truth is, most of the time when you are on the highway, spotting the police is a rare thing. There are occasional road safety blitzes, and often, if you see one cruiser, you’ll see a couple of them working tandem.

The RCMP used to make a big deal about bringing in an aircraft to spot speeders — or, at lest, they did, until the aircraft distance markers they had painted on the highway wore off and were never replaced. At least one of the signs saying “Speeds are Monitored by Aircraft” is still next to the TCH in a westbound lane before Butterpot Park, but it’s a leftover. And the RCMP plane? I don’t think there’s even one stationed on the island.

The RNC have ghost cars and speed traps — a couple of weeks ago, a blitz on people heading to the dump without tying down their trash — but it’s occasional.

The truth is, that except for those rare pushes, you’ve got to be pretty obviously breaking the law to get a ticket. I’ve stood at a St. John’s intersection, waiting to cross the road, with an RNC car the first car in the row of traffic, while a driver blew by through a red light, and the action didn’t so much as cause a flicker of a light bar.

Truth be told, we have loads of awful drivers, drivers who don’t know what turn signal is and have no idea what lane they’re supposed to occupy when they make a left turn — and speed limits? You could spend days writing tickets and not put a dent in the number of people ignoring posted speed limits, let alone driving at speeds that are downright dangerous during wet or snowy road conditions.

We could have a revenue source to rival the liquor corporation if the police were able to ticket just 70 per cent of those illegally using handheld cellphones or texting on the road. And speeding? The lowest speeding ticket is $50. If everyone the RCMP charged with speeding during road Safety Week had been a first-time offender going between one and 10 kilometres over the speed limit, the tickets would have collected over $37,000 for the provincial treasury. Annualize that, and you’re at almost $2 million in new revenue. In fact, the police probably wrote very few tickets for those speeds, and more for higher speeds where the fines are significantly higher.

There used to be a larger police road safety presence, including breathalyzer checks on holidays and roadblocks on secondary highways.

I haven’t seen one of those in years.

The police are all in favour of road safety, I don’t doubt that,

But handing out healthy snacks once a year during Easter week would be an unlikely effort to cut down year-round candy consumption.

“The truth is, most of the time when you are on the highway, spotting the police is a rare thing.”