You would think the sight of a crunched car on the highway would be a reminder for drivers to be more careful. But that obviously wasn鈥檛 the case for those who took pictures as they drove past a crash scene on the Pat Bay Highway Thursday.
A car travelling on Huxley Street left the road, plummeted down a grassy slope and over a rock face, landing nose down at the edge of the highway, just across from the Saanich Police Department.
Understandably, it was a scene that attracted a lot of attention from people in vehicles on the highway, some of whom decided to record the image for posterity or, more likely, for social-media bragging rights. The drive-by shooters, in turn, attracted the attention of police, who issued about 10 tickets for distracted driving. One unconfirmed report even had both the driver and the passenger in one vehicle recording the scene.
鈥淲e recognize that it鈥檚 an exciting, interesting, intriguing thing when you see a vehicle perched like that,鈥� said Sgt. Steve Eassie of the Saanich Police Department, 鈥渂ut by taking a photo as you drive by, you are putting others in danger.鈥�
He said the people working at the scene 鈥� police officers, tow-truck operators, firefighters and ambulance crew 鈥� want to return safely to their families at the end of the day. Drivers who are focused on the scene beside them, rather than the road ahead of them, are dangerous.
Rubberneckers have always been a hazard at crash scenes, but the ubiquity of portable electronic devices capable of taking photos and videos has doubled the danger. Who among us is not fascinated by a crash scene? But that morbid voyeurism has been taken to new heights 鈥� or depths 鈥� by the frenzy to get images posted on social media.
Issuing tickets to people for taking pictures is not new. In 2013, RCMP in Nova Scotia issued tickets to several drivers who were snapping pictures at the scene of a minor collision in the Halifax region after a police officer investigating the mishap was nearly run over by a driver taking video.
In 2014, RCMP issued distracted-driving tickets to what they called 鈥渁n alarming number of drivers鈥� who took photos as they drove past a crash scene on Alberta鈥檚 Highway 2 north of Calgary. Rather than pulling over the drivers, they took down licence numbers and mailed the tickets to vehicle owners.
At the other end of the spectrum from rubberneckers are impatient drivers who insist on proceeding past a crash scene without reducing speed.
鈥淭raffic slows to snail pace [at a crash scene],鈥� Eassie said, 鈥渨hile others are not slowing down.鈥�
The combination of the two can too easily turn one crash into a chain of collisions, sometimes with fatal results.
B.C. has a law that requires drivers to slow down and move over for all vehicles stopped along the road that have flashing red, blue or yellow lights. The law is necessary 鈥� over a period of 10 years, according to the RCMP, 235 roadside workers have been injured in B.C. and 15 have been killed.
Driving a car and taking a photo are both tasks that require a person鈥檚 full attention; attempting to do both at the same time is stupidity. It鈥檚 also illegal, as some drivers learned Thursday, although how anyone in this day and age could be oblivious to distracted-driving laws is incomprehensible.
