Re: RHD Rant
Posted: Mon May 03, 2010 5:43 pm
I just sent this off to Times Colonist:
Re: article "Impose strict limits on right-hand-drive cars" in Sunday's 2nd May paper
I want to begin my retort with one very clear point: there is no
supposed "loophole" in the Motor Vehicle Act that is allowing
right-hand drives (RHDs) or Japanese Domestic Models (JDMs) to
surreptitiously slip past the border and onto our streets. The Act
allows for the importing of vehicles over the age of 15 years (to date
of manufacture) regardless of driving handedness. These vehicles are
being legally imported by reputable importers and private citizens
with the full knowledge and under the careful scrutiny of the Canadian
Border Services Agency.
I would secondly like to point out that it seems quite apparent from
his own words that Mr. Hamen is ranting on rhetoric alone, never
having driven a RHD himself. His "unquestionable fact" is offered only
from "their" perspective, not his own. I would welcome him to take a
test-drive in a RHD to discover that it is not that difficult at all.
Given the purported difficulty of driving a RHD, would he further
suggest that postal truck and garbage truck and street cleaner drivers
are being offered 'special driving instruction' and 'extra
compensation' for being forced to drive "dangerous vehicles"?
As for RHDs having "statistically higher accident rates", I would
suggest that Mr. Hamen is simply regurgitating ICBC's poor excuse of a
'survey' of claims from a couple years ago. I would challenge Mr.
Hamen to identify all the crashed RHDs he's obviously driven past on
his way to work in the morning or to the store during the day. The way
he describes this perceived "plague" of RHDs on his roads, he must
have to wait hours each day to drive past accident scenes involving
hapless pedestrians and RHDs and bicycles and RHDs and
regular-and-normal-and-just-like-we've-had-for-years-and-years-LHDs!
Oh the mayhem! Oh the humanity!
I would suggest that Mr. Hamen focus his disdain rather on the
countless numbers of distracted and unobservant and unfocused and
downright clueless drivers in Victoria: drivers like those who turn
left into the right-hand lane in front of those turning right; the
perpetual-turners who drive block after block with their signal light
flashing; the no-turners who after sitting at a stop light without
their signal lights on suddenly decide they are going to turn; the
green-light stoppers (I still don't understand the reasoning behind
this group!); the stop sign drifters/rollers; the un-mergers (those
who can't seem to figure out how to get INTO the lane) or the
merge-fearers (those in the travelling lane who jam on the binders to
let the un-mergers IN); and finally, the no-heads or the no-see-ums,
those drivers who are so short (most of them bent over from age) they
surely must have much more limited fields of view than those of us who
are driving from the right side of the lane.
Driving from the right,
J. Paul Lang in Langford, BC
Re: article "Impose strict limits on right-hand-drive cars" in Sunday's 2nd May paper
I want to begin my retort with one very clear point: there is no
supposed "loophole" in the Motor Vehicle Act that is allowing
right-hand drives (RHDs) or Japanese Domestic Models (JDMs) to
surreptitiously slip past the border and onto our streets. The Act
allows for the importing of vehicles over the age of 15 years (to date
of manufacture) regardless of driving handedness. These vehicles are
being legally imported by reputable importers and private citizens
with the full knowledge and under the careful scrutiny of the Canadian
Border Services Agency.
I would secondly like to point out that it seems quite apparent from
his own words that Mr. Hamen is ranting on rhetoric alone, never
having driven a RHD himself. His "unquestionable fact" is offered only
from "their" perspective, not his own. I would welcome him to take a
test-drive in a RHD to discover that it is not that difficult at all.
Given the purported difficulty of driving a RHD, would he further
suggest that postal truck and garbage truck and street cleaner drivers
are being offered 'special driving instruction' and 'extra
compensation' for being forced to drive "dangerous vehicles"?
As for RHDs having "statistically higher accident rates", I would
suggest that Mr. Hamen is simply regurgitating ICBC's poor excuse of a
'survey' of claims from a couple years ago. I would challenge Mr.
Hamen to identify all the crashed RHDs he's obviously driven past on
his way to work in the morning or to the store during the day. The way
he describes this perceived "plague" of RHDs on his roads, he must
have to wait hours each day to drive past accident scenes involving
hapless pedestrians and RHDs and bicycles and RHDs and
regular-and-normal-and-just-like-we've-had-for-years-and-years-LHDs!
Oh the mayhem! Oh the humanity!
I would suggest that Mr. Hamen focus his disdain rather on the
countless numbers of distracted and unobservant and unfocused and
downright clueless drivers in Victoria: drivers like those who turn
left into the right-hand lane in front of those turning right; the
perpetual-turners who drive block after block with their signal light
flashing; the no-turners who after sitting at a stop light without
their signal lights on suddenly decide they are going to turn; the
green-light stoppers (I still don't understand the reasoning behind
this group!); the stop sign drifters/rollers; the un-mergers (those
who can't seem to figure out how to get INTO the lane) or the
merge-fearers (those in the travelling lane who jam on the binders to
let the un-mergers IN); and finally, the no-heads or the no-see-ums,
those drivers who are so short (most of them bent over from age) they
surely must have much more limited fields of view than those of us who
are driving from the right side of the lane.
Driving from the right,
J. Paul Lang in Langford, BC
Still traumatized? I wonder how motorcycles make her feel? Those centre-of-the-vehicle drivers - sheesh!