The intersection of Dunsmuir St. and Howe St. in downtown Vancouver’s shopping district last year.Isabella Falsetti/The Globe and Mail
Maybe you were in a hurry. Who isn’t these days? And how could you have known that the poor kid was taking his road test? But did you notice the big red “L” sticker on the back of the car? The one that, in B.C., indicates a learner is at the wheel? Could that have perhaps made you think twice before laying on the horn?
Because it wasn’t just a polite toot – hey, go ahead and turn; the coast is clear! It was an extended blare, my son reports.
Did the honk influence the examiner, who ultimately failed the young man, citing excessive caution? Likely not. Did it rattle the poor kid going through this already anxiety-riddled rite of passage? Lady, it did.
Failing your road test for being too cautious a driver is not an anomaly, as I have since learned. But when later that very day, at three intersections around Vancouver, we saw cars blow through red lights – red, not amber – oh, that burned.
And I thought: too cautious? The roads of Canada need more caution.
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But, as a seasoned driving examiner explained to me, being too cautious is in fact a danger on the roads. “When a person is driving too cautiously it stems … basically from a lack of confidence or fear of doing something wrong,” Jerry Boal, with the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC), told me.
Now manager of ICBC’s North Vancouver Driver Licensing Office, Mr. Boal, in 24 years with ICBC, has conducted more than 10,000 road tests. “People honk all the time,” he told me.
Ma’am, you’re not the only one.
“And sometimes it’s warranted and sometimes it’s not. But the examiner will not use that as anything towards the examinee unless it was something that the examinee caused to be the case.”
In other words, your honk did not affect the examiner’s decision. But, says Mr. Boal, “your son would have got pretty nervous.”
Mr. Boal has himself failed drivers for being too cautious. “It stems and creates behaviours on the road that are unsafe,” he said. “Driving behind a slow driver or … someone who’s not going when it’s their turn to go, it causes a lot of road rage; it causes a lot of frustration for other drivers and it can become an issue.”
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Miss, I didn’t love this explanation, as I believe the bad person in this equation is the road-rager. But Mr. Boal knows his stuff. If someone is driving substantially below the speed limit consistently for no appropriate reason (weather, traffic) and taking too long to make a safe turn, that is unpredictable behaviour for other drivers and thus problematic.
That said, the top factor in fatal crashes involving young drivers in B.C., according to ICBC, is distracted driving.
And speeding, especially excessive speeding, remains a main contributor to crashes, serious injuries and fatalities, according to the Traffic Injury Research Foundation (TIRF).
Distracted driving has been the bailiwick of TIRF’s Karen Bowman since she witnessed parents ubiquitously on their phones during a school drop-off in Surrey, B.C., years ago. On a walk to blow off steam, she came up with an idea: an education campaign called “Drop it and Drive.”
A few years later, her own daughter, then 8, was injured in a car crash. (Ms. Bowman rejects the term “accident” – “they’re crashes or collisions,” she says). The after-effects still plague Kylee, now 24 and involved in TIRF. In a recent blog post, she explored how driving goes from anxiety-inducing at 16 to almost routine by 24 – but as young drivers become more confident, they allow more distractions to creep in. Which is dangerous.
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“There’s a fine line between confidence and overconfidence,” she writes. While confidence can be good, “overconfidence can get you killed.”
Ms. Horn Honker, we all want the best for our children. I went all Mama Bear when I heard that someone – you – had honked at my son during his test. But I’m working on my own anger issues. And perspective. This is nothing compared to what Ms. Bowman experienced when she answered the phone to hear someone wailing that her eight-year-old had been in a car that crashed. “I didn’t know if I still had a daughter or not.”
She was lucky. Many families have dealt with the worst outcome. In 2023, there were 1,964 motor vehicle fatalities in Canada.
This fact can make this weekend, Mother’s Day, unbearable.
I don’t need flowers or brunch on Sunday. What I do ask of anyone reading this is to please be kind on the road – and cautious, if not overly, behind the wheel. Our kids’ lives depend on it.