Injured people need a chance to be heard
I hope it is understood, that people who are being injured under the ICBC no-fault system need to be heard. It’s a nightmare at our end of this new system.
I was denied medical attention based on ICBC doing all kinds of things that are in fact in violation of our rights. Strangely, the fact that cars are a deadly weapon against humans is suddenly being ignored.
Additionally, their agents are not medical professionals but they can dictate what kind of medical treatments we need.
They covered this up so that they wouldn’t be forced to pay for surgery I badly needed following this accident. One doesn’t get such severe injuries from just falling.
They cover up how badly injured pedestrians are from bad drivers. In my case they told police not to get involved.
All that in order to provide bad drivers excuses to do harm to others.
This is absolutely outrageous, and it is a dangerous mishandling of my case.
The full force of a car pushing up against a human body feels so overwhelming. It is nothing a pedestrian has any chance to win.
Nicole Denis
Victoria
Speeding happens in cars and on e-bikes
Re: “E-bikes should be seen as motorcycles,” letter, May 24.
It is great that some people live so far from reality that they believe ICBC has the amount of power to be able to administer insurance and licences to every cyclist in Victoria.
I don’t feel like paying my provincial taxes so we can pull an eight-year-old over on his way to elementary school because he did a California stop at the stop sign.
If we consider that the slowest speed in Greater Victoria typically seems to be 30 km/h, how many bikes/e-bikes are going beyond this?
It is no different than cars, which also seemingly love to go 60 km/h in 50 km/h zones.
Speeding cyclists are just the people who were doing it on cars, who transitioned onto e-bikes. The speeding happens on all methods of transportation.
With that being said, I can’t wait to take my speedster “motorcycle” home today, which tops out at an insane 32 km/h!
Ty Ferreira
Victoria
Get the speeders off our roads
The April 10 ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ ran a story of three teen drivers violating speed limits, with one bearing a fake driver’s licence. The result? Fines for each of $386 and vehicle impoundments of seven days.
The sound of broken record, because after that finger wagging they’re back behind the wheel.
A May 24 letter called for bike regulation in the areas of training, licensing, registration, speed limits on trails and bike path design. Not unlike the infrastructure for vehicles and roads.
So just how much have decades of vehicle bureaucracy — the model at hand for bikes — done to reduce crash fatalities?
Take a look at some ICBC stats on those fatalities for the past decade and focus on their top contributing factors. Speeding tops the list.
The answer to the cycling problem isn’t another application of meaningless fines, overnight impoundments and licence suspensions. It’s time to stop the killing.
Get the speed-blind drivers of cars and bikes off the road. Permanently.
Brian Nimeroski
Sooke
Vote splitting and who will win the next election
Re: “Fight problems with common-sense solutions,” letter, May 27.
“The Solutionists Party” sounds like an interesting idea. Especially since “first past the post” vote splitting could make all the disparate alternatives to the NDP impotent.
This is a perfect example of why FPTP voting is so unfair. We all know that the ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ voting system won’t change before the next election. We also know consolidating the opposition parties is the only way the NDP are going to be defeated.
This will be a good test to see if the opposition parties are populated by statesmen or just more politicians.
S.I. Petersen
Nanaimo
Boxed in, unable to move for 15 minutes
On Sunday, May 26, I was caught in a road delay at an intersection near the north end of Shelbourne near Mount Doug Park because of the Ironman race.
I was stuck there in my car for over 15 minutes while the cyclists zoomed by. I was boxed in: I couldn’t do a U-turn, couldn’t back up and had no way of turning off onto another street.
While this can be frustrating to drivers at the best of times, for me it was particularly problematic as I was supposed to be at the site for my races by 7:30 a.m. As a result of this Ironman delay, I was late.
Signage about upcoming road issues in the area were minor, only indicating a signal person. No event signs were posted. The Ironman and local traffic officials who develop and authorize these cycling routes need to provide better warning signs and ensure drivers don’t get boxed in.
Routes need to be selected that will enable drivers to access alternative routes with signage or when stopped by the event volunteers.
While I can appreciate the Ironman sport and the participants it brings to the city, the event cannot be considered in isolation.
My event also brought competitors to Victoria and was not insignificant with 1,000 competitors. Ironman organizers can do better.
Fran Wallace
Saanich
All that logging is just not sustainable
Re: “Logging in,” Islander, May 26.
The article by Stefan Labbé brought to mind two periods when I lived on Vancouver Island.
The first was when I flew in a small plane from Victoria airport around the southern tip and then up the west coast to Nitinat Lake before heading back to the airport.
The amount of logging and resulting scars shocked me. Most of the logging was in very remote areas where most people would never see what had happened.
The second time period was from the mid 1990s until 2010 when I spent my summers at Shawnigan Lake. The number of truck loads of raw logs coming from the hills at the north end of the lake was astonishing and was all day five days a week.
How is this sustainable not just here but throughout the province, or the world for that matter?
How can shipping raw logs overseas be justified especially when lumber mills are closing down because of a lack of fibre? How can chipping logs to make fuel pellets be a useful end product for our resources?
The logging industry is trying to gaslight us into believing they can be our “hero.”
What a joke. Don’t be fooled.
Michael Drescher
Victoria
Send firefighters to teach our children
Taxpayers are funding an under-utilized, highly trained, respected resource who could, and should, be in our schools providing information on lifestyle, fires, first response on a number of social issues that first responders respond to today.
The police departments are far too busy with social issues on the downstream of not educating students of the present situation of drug use and the resulting tragedies and disorder.
Their job is to slow the growth of deadly drugs in our communities. They need to do more.
First responders in emergency rooms and ambulance attendants would be best at presenting their overdose experiences with students, but as with the police, they are far too busy with the outcome of this lack of education in our schools and communities.
A ladder truck would be welcome at any school.
Phil Harrison
Comox Valley
American senators should leave us alone
Re: “U.S. Senators write to Trudeau to urge ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ to meet NATO spending target,” May 24.
Is this not a form of a foreign government interfering in Canadian affairs? This type of decision is a domestic issue and not the business of foreigners, foreign governments or foreign corporations.
Is this another example of where decisions are decided upon who is trying to influence our government to rule in their favour?
The U.S. Senate is a powerful arm of the U.S. government. The senators are members of a political party, which if Donald Trump should be re-elected will be a governing party.
That party would be closely associated with the government of a major world power.
Even without being members of the president’s party, the Senate is still very influential in the U.S. government.
This type of letter has no business being addressed to our prime minister, or other government members.
Should this letter be a more acceptable letter than one from a number of members of the Politburo in Beijing, who are also members of a governing party, advocating for a Canadian government decision which they deem is in their favour?
Both types of letters should be strongly deemed as being unacceptable.
Both the U.S. and China are powerful world powers. One common trait that they both have is that their actions and views are based on what they determine is in their own best interests, first.
Robert Townsend
Saanich
Unsupervised dogs are a danger to others
Re: “Keep dogs under control, even in off-leash areas,” letter, May 16.
I have enjoyed walking the beach along Dallas Road for more than 20 years. One of my favou rite spots is the beach at the end of Cook Street.
Unfortunately, in the past few years an increasing amount of dogs are allowed to run unsupervised by their owners. On many occasions I have been sitting or kneeling on the sand collecting pieces of glass and have had dogs run right up to me.
Some stick their face in mine, others run around me. When I have looked up startled by this sudden intrusion the owner always smiles at me as if to dismiss the dog’s behaviour.
I understand dogs need to run free and they have the right to do that, but there is a time and place to leash your dog.
Ann Hagel
Victoria
Two different views of a canine altercation
Re: “Keep dogs under control, even in off‑leash areas,” letter, May 16.
On May 9 at Montague Park (an off-leash park in Saanich) I was sitting on a bench, my docile 11-year-old boxer beside me, when a couple of people with a dog walked past me.
My dog ambled over to their dog and when they were face to face, the other dog attacked.
The aggressive dog was a pit bull, I realized, and it went for my dog’s neck.
I attempted to stop the carnage by separating them (wrong response I know but my protective instincts were too great) and in the process my hand got bitten.
At the end of the altercation some residents in a nearby house came to help us, for which I am very grateful.
Unfortunately, they saw only the aftermath of the attack and were not witness to the beginning of the event.
As my first priority was getting medical help for myself and vet’s care for my dog, my report didn’t get to animal control until much later.
The following day when an animal control officer called me, I was told that the pit bull’s owner had already submitted a report stating that my boxer attacked the pit bull and the attack was witnessed by her friend.
I was advised by animal control that in these situations their hands are tied and there would be no further action other than the reports being in their system.
No interviews with the dog owners, no statement of injuries caused, no warnings given to the neighbours.
How unfortunate and dangerous that in this quiet park, where children often play, an irresponsible dog owner is bringing an unleashed, unmuzzled and clearly uncontrollable dog to the park.
Carol Murray
Victoria
North Saanich council taking correct approach
We have been following the situation regarding pickleball noise and the closure of the courts at Wain Park.
Here in Nanaimo we have six courts 30 feet from our property line and have been working to get them closed.
As well as the constant “pop” of the ball being hit there is also never-ending screaming and yelling and cursing that accompanies it. Pickleballers are the worst neighbours you could possibly have.
Nanaimo like North Saanich has a noise bylaw and it clearly states that it is an offence to make noise that disturbs others.
It does not refer to an amount of noise in decibels except in relation to heat pumps.
The Pickleball Association of ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ used the Victoria company PAB to conduct surveys on pickleball noise two years ago and they recommend that pickleball courts be a minimum of 100 metres from residents.
The main difference between the problem in North Saanich and the one in Nanaimo is that the North Saanich council is doing what is right in support of the residents close to Wain Park.
Nanaimo on the other hand has decided that pickleball is more important than peace and quiet for residents.
David Maloney
Nanaimo
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