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Archive of posts tagged street courtesy

pass it forward…

Posted by  on 9 July 2009, 3:43 pm
recently i’ve been involved in an accident. it happened in the night from saturday towards sunday at around 2:30am. traveling in the second lane of a 3 lane street (kingsway for those who are aware of it) and approaching an intersection. the light turns green, and the car in the second lane remains stationary even thought the light was green. the third lane was quite busy, yet the first lane was clear prior and after the intersection. i switch onto the first lane…and as i get closer to the intersection, the white hyundai in the second lane decided to turn right onto the other street…as he is doing this he runs right into me. here’s how the damage looks…
as my car stops, i take a look back to see the white hyundai finish taking the right turn onto nanaimo st, and continuing. as this occurs, a dark colour car speeds after the hyundai. a witness engages into action, stops the other driver and starts yelling at him as to why he was about to take off. as this happens, i pull behind them and get out of my car…

the following day i spent about an hour sharing my story with icbc, and during this i try to provide as many details as possible, including that the other driver tried to drive away and was stopped by the witness. on top of this, it seemed to me the other driver was impaired, quite heavily. however, at that time it did not occur to me to contact the police…this little detail only occurred to me next morning. anyhow…icbc ruled on the thing quite quickly, 100% the other driver’s fault…

anyhow, this post is not so much about the accident itself, but a gesture received by yours truly. after the icbc thing was concluded, i decided to call the witness and thank him once more for his action on the respective night…and offered to buy him a beer as a sign of recognition for his involvement (keep in mind that the icbc case was closed, thus this would not interfere with his statement…). anyhow, the witness thanked me for taking my time to give him the updates and graciously refused the offer. however, he took time to mention ‘you’ve received a nice gesture, so all i ask instead of the beer is to pass on the gesture when the opportunity occurs’. overall, it’s great to see that nice gestures are still possible and that people will help another in need. appreciate the effort he put in stopping the other driver from taking off and staying with him until i managed to pull my car behind them. amazing gesture not only on the night of the accident, but after-wads as well. so for this…i will finish this with a ‘thank you!’

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headlights

Posted by  on 29 September 2008, 3:10 am

finally a ‘pet peeve’, headlights. headlights that are set on the ‘high beam’ setting while driving on the very dark vancouver streets. it is infuriating having a ‘driver’ come behind you with his/her high beam on and not think twice that perhaps it might be a nuisance. it is quite disturbing and rude having to put up with ‘drivers’ that seem to lack the concept of not only street courtesy, but logic all together. whether the car is behind you or in front of you, it is distracting and annoying.

leaving personal preference aside, it is simply ‘extremely dangerous’. the high beam setting is and was provided for dark streets outside of the city. it is unsafe driving with them on. blinding the driver on the opposite lane can cause accidents. driving behind someone with your high beams on, will cause distraction with the same effect as in the previous question.

vancouver streets are equipped with numerous lights, you barely need your low beam on to be able to see where you drive. i am still stupidified why someone would need to turn their high beams on and drive as if they were alone on the road. it’s simply unsafe, so STOP DOING IT.

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