According to an increasingly vocal lobby of B.C. drivers, speed limits on our highways are far too low. Minister of Transportation Todd Stone is listening and a review is underway.
Leading the campaign to up the speed limit ante is Ian Tootill, a self-confessed "brutally frank and somewhat caustic" crusader with a litany of beefs against what he calls "do-gooder, controlling types." In 2009, Tootill was issued a $109 traffic ticket for challenging Vancouver's noise bylaws astride a Harley outfitted with a set of after-market "Screamin' Eagle" pipes. According to the police report, they were "at least twice as loud as a stock exhaust system."
During the provincial election campaign this past spring, he was briefly a candidate for the B.C. Conservatives in the high-profile riding of Vancouver-False Creek. When the Vancouver Sun leaked some of his controversial politically incorrect tweets, he was given the boot by party officials, who referred to Tootill's communiqués as "unacceptable and downright shameful."
His detractors refer to him as a loose cannon; supporters hear the voice of reason speaking out against the relentless encroachment of the nanny state. Tootill is the co-founder ofSENSE B.C. (Safety By Education Not Speed Enforcement) and he believes "we all live in constant fear - 18,000 B.C. drivers have had their cars impounded for speeding." To underscore that message, his pro-speed group recently posted a provocative video on YouTube. According to Tootill, once speed limits are raised to 130 km/h, or 140 km/h, those posted limits will be breached infrequently because most drivers will feel they are going fast enough. As a result, fewer tickets will be issued and we'll all be happier campers.
But there are flaws in the Tootill doctrine. In reality, once speed limits are raised, the prevailing psychology governing driver behaviour will be to go even faster. Let's use the Sea to Sky Highway as an example. At the moment, the average speed on that major north-south artery is in the 100-110 km/h range in 80 km/h zones and higher in the 90 km/h sections. If speed limits are increased to 100 km/h, speeds in the vicinity of 120-130 km/h and beyond, on what can be a treacherous stretch of asphalt, are inevitable. The reason for that assessment is clear-cut: most speeding drivers get away with it because enforcement is sketchy. Certainly we've all witnessed the periodic high-profile radar blitzes and patrols, but at the moment, they are too infrequent to change driver behaviour.
The existing relationship between drivers and the cops brings to mind a tacit agreement that evolved between underperforming factory workers in the Soviet Union and their government: "we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us." Here, the prevailing maxim is "we pretend to adhere to the speed limit, they pretend to enforce it."
