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COLUMN: Attitude bias lines ICBC coffers

W ell folks, although Halloween is still almost two months away, ICBC is asking drivers to shell out for yet another premium hike.
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Well folks, although Halloween is still almost two months away, ICBC is asking drivers to shell out for yet another premium hike. To justify that top-up, officials from the provincial automotive insurance provider cite the usual suspects, a narrative that only tells part of the story.                                        

B.C. has more than three million registered vehicles on the road and there were 300,000 crashes last year, a jump of 15 per cent since 2013. Consequently, ICBC is processing more claims than ever before and the cost of settling those claims rose to $2.4 billion in 2015. That’s up by $900 million, or 60 per cent, over the last seven years.

Distracted driving is now responsible for approximately one quarter of all fatal crashes in the province. And, according to the B.C. Ministry of Transportation, collision rates increased in nearly half of the 33 highway zones where speed limits were raised. But on a number of roads with higher limits, crashes dropped and there was a 9 per cent collision rate increase where speed parameters did not go up. 

To justify increased speed limits on many provincial thoroughfares, Transportation Minister Todd Stone said it is “generally accepted by road safety engineers worldwide that appropriate speed limits improve driver compliance while reducing driver aggression and unsafe manoeuvres.” 

As much as that theory sounds plausible, for the most part here in B.C. it’s a pipe dream. Speed limits were raised two years ago to what were considered optimal levels. Now drivers exceed those posted constraints by 20 kilometre an hour and many vehicles travel even faster. At the lower end of the speed spectrum we have drivers who insist on failing to comply with signage requiring slower vehicles travelling in the passing lane to move over. As a result, road rage incidents triggered by highway turf wars are proliferating. 

But let’s look beyond the logistics of the rubber hitting the road and revisit a fundamental theory from Psychology 101 which states that behaviour is shaped and modified by its consequences. One of the biggest reasons for disobeying the law is insufficient enforcement; since cops are few and far between, drivers have less incentive to comply with the rules. The end result is a profusion of speeding, tailgating, red light running and distracted driving, all leading to costly mishaps. 

That being said, at the very heart of the escalating mayhem on our roads is an attitude problem: never have so many drivers been so disrespectful of traffic regulations and never have drivers displayed such a high level of entitlement and self-absorption. Until that attitude bias is addressed, vehicle owners will continue to toss even more of their hard earned cash into ICBC coffers.

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