A driver was attempting one of the most difficult traffic moves in the city the other day — making a left turn from the foot of Yates Street onto Wharf Street in heavy afternoon traffic.
It’s tricky because you need two gaps in traffic each way, nearby bridge approach construction has clogged things up and there are two crosswalks to check.
The guy not only accomplished the manoeuvre, he did it one-handed — because he was holding a phone to his ear with his left hand.
To me, he’s the personification of why ICBC is on the financial rocks, why politicians are scrambling to avoid imposing 30 to 40 per cent rate hikes, and why it’s going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars regardless of what they do. The fancy footwork the previous B.C. Liberal government did with ICBC’s books has had due scrutiny, but the root cause of the immediate financial crisis is a sustained increase in B.C.’s accident rate over the past few years.
Although hard and fast evidence is hard to come by, it seems as if distracted driving is the root cause.
There is lots of analysis of fatal accidents, and it shows that they are declining. They dropped 30 per cent from 2006 to 2015. The major changes in the impaired-driving enforcement regime — big administrative penalties and instant suspensions with little need for criminal-court proceedings — seem to have played a role.
But the vast bulk of ICBC’s costs stem from routine “minor” crashes, and there’s not nearly as much hard data on the causes. In 2008, the law was changed so that police are not required to attend all crashes. They attend at their discretion.
ICBC says there’s a marked decrease in police-attended reports submitted to the insurance company. And those are the only reports that list contributing factors for crashes. So ICBC now lists contributing factors only for fatal crashes.
In the vast majority of other non-fatal crashes, the data on exactly what caused them are a bit shaky. Distraction (in any and all forms) is neck-and-neck with speed as a prime cause in fatality crashes. It’s a safe bet that it’s a contributing factor in more minor crashes as well.
Police blitzes on distracted driving related to phone use provide some evidence, but not a conclusive picture. Tickets for using an electronic device while driving topped 43,000 in 2016.
But counting the number of fish caught doesn’t always reveal how many are in the sea. Only a small fraction of the tickets are for texting, because it’s much harder to ascertain. But people generally text at least as much as they talk. The cause of the recent jump in crashes isn’t confirmed, but distracted driving is my pick.
The Ernst & Young report that focused attention on ICBC’s financial crisis noted that B.C.’s road-crash rate trended downward (30 per cent) from 2006 until two years ago. Then it spiked up, with 20,000 more crashes a year in B.C. since 2013, with the same trend observed elsewhere.
There have been two panicky political moments since then. The most recent one was when the Ernst & Young report warned that premium hikes of 30 per cent in the next two years would be needed if the auto insurance plan isn’t dramatically reformed.
The previous one was last year, when ICBC presented a “hypothetical” scenario of a 42 per cent premium hike over five years.
In both cases, ministers from two different governments rushed in to reassure people. Attorney General David Eby has confirmed a 30 per cent hike isn’t happening.
What’s less clear is how ICBC will make up the shortfall. The government forbids a big rate hike.
It can’t cut the main cost-driver (claims) and Eby says it’s facing insolvency.
It might need a big infusion of cash while the various reform ideas are assessed and imposed.
The Liberal government grabbed $1 billion in excess revenue during better times. The NDP government might be faced with having to give a lot of it back.
What’s prompting it all is drivers who make the toughest left turn in the city while talking on the phone.
