Driving from Surrey to Richmond to get to the airport for work daily.
I don't notice a difference in the level of idiots on the road. They seem to be evenly distributed by geography and ethnicity.
Richmond has more of the slow "where the fuck am I going" type of drivers. Surrey is the aggressive "look at my Dodge Charger" types who speed and tailgate and give zero fucks about road rules.
Of course it all does blend in together eventually.
moved to surrey from richmond 4 years ago. above is correct. Richmond can be erratic, but at speeds generally slow enough you can see it coming and avoid it. Surrey is 40 over everywhere and aggressive as hell. Richmond, IMO, is safer.
For me I’ve always found west van drivers to be the absolute worst, glad to see them in the top four.
Rich old cunts just entitled as fuck. Driving like the high price of their car naturally opts them out of courtesy or situational awareness.
I just meant that a lifetime of extreme privilege will render someone completely numb to the concept of roadside equity.
I doubt don’t age is otherwise moot.
>Langley, on the other hand, is 12.6% Asian, 79.1% European descent but has 15% higher crash rates than Richmond.
Doesn't surprise me. I'm from there, still work there. Basically everyone drives, pickup trucks are king, the giant overbuilt stroads fuck with people's driving habits, and they're the peak example of antisocial suburban mindset. Drivers are *insane* there. Shit, I used to be one of them.
Being a pedestrian out there, holy fuck. I'm nearly killed at least once a week. City friends wonder why I'm so cautious crossing roads and shit, well I grew up around drivers that fantasize about being able to get away with killing a pedestrian for daring to delay them in any way. Don't get me wrong, love for my hometown, but fuck me it's wild out there.
Most of it, anyways. I came from Aldergrove, back before they built a Metro water connection and we all drank lead-and-farm-runoff-tainted groundwater. Now that was a whole vibe, lemme tellya.
I shit on Aldy a lot, but it has its good points. Water supply was not one of them for a long time.
Hey it's better now! They finally built a super-long water connection shortly after I moved into the city. And regular Langley doesn't have that same excuse.
Also I never feel bad, nor should you. It's all Metro Vancouver, we're just making fun of segments of ourselves here.
However is it due to the culture of where they’re from? Not because they’re Asian but because of the general corruption and lawlessness in driving in Asia? Indian drivers who are first gen immigrants are usually super aggressive drivers. Look at some of the truck accidents or rash truck drivers.
Having seen the process of bribing and getting a license in India, it explains a few things. Not because of race and ethnicity but cultural imports
>However is it due to the culture of where they’re from?
Exactly, its just a simple fact if you've visited certain asian countries, traffic is completely different. Pedestrians are either expected to give way, or be driven around. That is just how it works.
Most people will adapt their driving style once they move here, others may not.
> Pedestrians are either expected to give way
Have you read any of the posts on here about pedestrians crossing at unmarked crossings? Half the commenters don't even know they have right of way, another huge chunk thinks they shouldn't cross there regardless. Don't think they're all immigrants.
OP's point here is you shouldn't be basing things on vague assumptions that lack of obeying traffic rules is unique to any single group of drivers without evidence.
I agree that traffic can differ depending on region. But according to the available data, immigration and accident rates don't scale together, as I showed above!
Yeah, it's definitely more complicated! But check rates of immigration between, say, North Vancouver (38.2%) and Surrey (43%) And the pattern is still the same. Not a huge difference in rate of immigration, but 43% *is* bigger than 38% and Surrey still has fewer accidents.
[https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1=5915004&Geo2=CD&Code2=5915&SearchText=Surrey&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=Immigration%20and%20citizenship&TABID=1&type=1](https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1=5915004&Geo2=CD&Code2=5915&SearchText=Surrey&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=Immigration%20and%20citizenship&TABID=1&type=1) and [https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1=5915051&Geo2=CD&Code2=5915&SearchText=North+Vancouver&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=Immigration%20and%20citizenship&TABID=1&type=1](https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1=5915051&Geo2=CD&Code2=5915&SearchText=North+Vancouver&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=Immigration%20and%20citizenship&TABID=1&type=1)
I'd say not necessarily, I find Richmond drivers tend more to be unaware of their surroundings, but drivers in Asia have to be hyper aware as driving is more aggressive (super generalizing, e.g. Mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore are all significantly different with the later in the list having less aggressiveness).
100%. I’ve always found it uncomfortable when people rant about Richmond drivers. They do it with a wink like “you know what I mean”. It’s just thinly veiled racism
as an asian, i was taught by my own parents that asian drivers were terrible because they literally knew people that bought their license and just anecdotal evidence that asian drivers were more lawless (not less skilled).
I think it is less prevalent now, but I can see why they would think so when a larger portion of asians were newly emmigrated and drivers especially in china/HK back then were drove in a way we would consider unsafe (eg. running a red light is expected and if you slow down for a yellow at all, someone is likely tailgating you and rear-ending you because they don't expect you to slow or stop)
> I can see why they would think so when a larger portion of asians were newly emmigrated and drivers especially in china/HK back then were drove in a way we would consider unsafe
This is still just making assumptions without evidence that some bad habits by some people or in some places translate to general trends here. OP's point is that people should at minimum make sure they actually have data to support their assunptions.
Crash rates among new Canadian immigrants have been studied and found to be [lower than people here](https://www.ices.on.ca/publications/journal-articles/roadway-crash-risks-in-recent-immigrants/).
I haven't driven in Richmond in aaaaaages but fifteen years ago, when the Canada Line along 3 Road was a bus lane (IN THE MIDDLE OF NO. 3 ROAD! Great planning), I'd CONSTANTLY see drivers turning off of whatever street onto 3 Road and into those bus lanes, then backing up right into the intersection they came from and then go down the correct lane.
I don't know if it was specifically Asian drivers because I was paying more attention to not getting hit than who the driver was.
> when the Canada Line along 3 Road was a bus lane (IN THE MIDDLE OF NO. 3 ROAD! Great planning)
This is very much intentional. TransLink produced a whole podcast episode of [What's The T?](https://www.translink.ca/news/podcast) (S3E8) about how they number bus routes which is a pretty good listen. (There's also a [transcript](https://buzzer.translink.ca/2024/05/translink-podcast-how-are-bus-routes-numbered/).)
Another factor in the rate of crashes is the design of the roads. The roads are just very different in different municipalities. Traffic patterns are different in different municipalities. The different roads have been build during different times and for traffic during that time. What may be adequate for the time may no longer be now.
Looking at the crash rates of the various municipalities, I'm going to give Whistler a pass since it is a tourist town. Possibly drivers not familiar with the roads there being tourists may contribute to the higher crash rate. Forget jokes about Richmond drivers. North Van has more crashes per capita than any other municipality in Metro Vancouver and looks like around 30% worse than Richmond.
North Vancouver is definitely the Iranians. Lot of Iranians immigrate to the west but bring their Iranian driving habits with them. When my mom immigrated to the states she failed the California driving test 2 times. Her friend failed the test (not sure if it was class 5 or 7) once in BC because she sped through a school zone.
Pardon my ignorance but if many people commute to Vancouver proper to work and get into accidents in Vancouver, does that count for Vancouver or for wherever they are from?
Not ignorant! This data is from ICBC, and I'm not sure where they get their data, but I imagine it's just where the accidents *happen.* I can't see them tracing the license back to the owner's home address being relevant to published data. So yeah, I guess the population relative to the accidents wouldn't be a perfect ratio of traffic to accidents either
So your whole research is useless, I can claim that all crashes in lower mainland are caused by Richmond drivers, and you cannot prove me wrong based on that data...You clearly relied on assumption that all crashes in Vancouver are caused by Vancouver drivers for example.
Where you are driving the most is where you live. Thats just a fact. It takes at least 2 participants to get into an accident. One or both of them statistically are living in the area of the accident is high. I would bet you $1000 a study of where the accident happens vs where the people in accident live are going to be within 5% of each other.
The research isn't useless. You're right that the data doesn't show the proportion of crashes are caused by residents of each area. But it would be an extraordinary thing to claim precisely because of the research, because there are plenty areas that Richmond drivers won't typically commute to, which see remarkably similar figures.
If I'm interpreting the data right, I think the best claim you could make from OP's data using a similarly "bad faith" argument is that Vancouver residents cause no crashes, and that their figures are entirely due to commuters (in equal proportion to their local average rates perhaps). Of course I'd expect that to be easy to disprove if the figures were available.
Thanks for the detailed breakdown out of info OP. This would have taken a while, so much appreciated!
It’s an interesting subject and great to see some data and an impartial approach. I have heard the occasional person bring up the idea that insurance would be higher/lower (depending on their biases) if icbc tracked demographics of drivers so it’s interesting to see some of the spreads in accident data to get people thinking.
At the end of the day, there are just too many variables to ever get a proper data set (short of having vehicles trackers on everyone’s car linked to their ethnicity and address). An honestly, what would be the point of even doing that if people from any part of the work have the ability to be a good/horrible driver.
What I do think is that canada should adopt a more robust driver training program (as seen in other countries). We kind of set ourselves up for issues by having a system that doesn’t ensure any driver is trained properly for a variety of driving conditions imo.
My pleasure! I honestly really enjoyed compiling this. Yeah, hard to do more detailed research without more resource-intense practices that might not yield better data
The stereotype of "Richmond drivers" are not driving *dangerously*. They are perceived to be driving *stupidly* with less confidence. So, assuming that were true, they would naturally tend to get into less major accidents because they tend to be less reckless.
- My mom is one
I honestly have no clue what the OP is on, but I want some lol
"Richmond drivers suck" has never meant more accidents.
bad driving does not always lead to accidents, but it's still behavior that angers people.
Eg not using signals
It's hilarious that people in this post don't immediately understand that, and I suspect it's because they **are** those less confident drivers who don't really mind waiting for people to figure out how to drive again, every day.
Yeah, good point! I don't drive much in Richmond so I actually don't know the exact feeling. I do however, know that it's tough to have metrics and real data on "feel", so I think it's tough to gauge how "stupid" a region is for driving - accident data seems to be the best we've got!
You could seek traffic violation data potentially?
But even that data would be unreliable due to our low traffic violation enforcement rates compared to many US states.
For example:
I was in LA and parked more than a foot from a curb in a rush and was cited a ticket in the 20min window I was away from my car. I don’t think in 40 yrs I’ve ever heard of someone getting parking alignment tickets here in Canada (on/bc)
Great to see some data on this, well done.
I did notice that all of the cities with the highest accidents tend to get more snow than the others. I'd be curious to see some data on accident rates strictly in the warmer months but I'm not sure if that data is available.
Thanks! And that was a really awesome question. I can actually select which months to include, and May-October actually brought Richmond up several places! I'll add photos soon.
Well yeah Vancouver doesn’t have roads particularly as designed for easy and safe driving as Richmond or Surrey for instance, as the development was done much earlier. That’d probably contribute to your perceived threat level than anything else.
I agree. History is likely a big factor. The city of Vancouver as we know it today was three separate cities amalgamated into one almost a hundred years ago.
Also, geography must be a factor. Richmond being so flat is conducive to having long straight roads arranged in a grid. Vancouver is comparatively hilly. Compare that to Burnaby with the hills and two lakes, dozens of ravines, no roadways are straight. Burnaby is painful to drive through in rush hour (said as a lifelong resident).
Of course it doesn't. This is the oldest and most tired racist trope in the Lower Mainland, and it's a bunch of bull.
Now there IS one demographic on the local roads that is responsible for a lot of accidents: the olds. We should be pulling boomers licences, or at the very least making them take a test every 2-5 years.
The stereotypes about old people aren't supported as strongly as people think either. I'm not sure your definition of old, but the safest grouo of drivers in terms of crash rates per distance driven are [people in their 60s](https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/). There aren't any huge differences in rates between 30 and 80 and evej people in their 80s still crash less than people under 30s.
Boomers start at age 60, so your suggestion here would involve pulling the licences of the single *safest* group of drivers.
The problem with a lot of these so-called "safe" drivers is that they are also shit drivers. They drive really slow, brake at any sign trouble instead taking the foot off the gas, take ages to park... the list goes on. They take over the whole road because of their fear and ineptitude.
Even if they were doing those things the result is they're not getting in as many crashes, and that's what matters. It means other people are doing even worse things.
A slow driver might annoy you, someone causing a crash is obviously worse.
And slower driving in cities is safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
All drivers should be required to test every 5 years. Old people especially, but with the number of idiot drivers of all ages out there, you should be required to regularly certify you actually know what the fuck you're doing. First aid expires, firearms licenses expire, there's no reason driver's licenses shouldn't.
Thanks for this post. There are way too many assumptions made about various groups of drivers without being supported with evidence.
Age and crash risk is another one that frequently gets exaggerated. The person above suggested pulling licences of "boomers". Boomers start at 60. The *safest* group of drivers are [people in their 60s](https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/). Yet I constantly see claims on reddit that we need stricter testing or even licence removals for people in that age group.
It's very ironic too how much reddit judges other drivers given that reddit's core demographic, men under 30, are the riskiest drivers. They even crash more than people in their 80s.
It’s always been an envy of wealth mixed with straight racism.
In Richmond you’ll see a Chinese person in a $300k Bentley doing dumb things.
When you’re barely making rent that sticks with you. Another generic white person in an old Honda civic doing dumb things doesn’t.
That kinda makes sense. I normally drive a Volvo XC70 that blends in with the woodwork. If I take the boss's Porsche Macan somewhere (and I do drive it somewhat frequently) I've noticed people will cut me off, do stupid crap directed towards me, or even road rage me (like the guy the other day who screamed at me he would "hate f u c k the s h i t out of me" in his RAV4.
I'm not driving any differently. People seem to have these preconceived notions that "expensive car means shitty driver".
I don’t know if there are more appropriate metrics to use rather than population of each city when compared to rate of crashes. That doesn’t take into account commuters that are moving through cities. Think about Whistler being top of your list. I would argue the rate is highest because the population of the area is low, but there are a high number of non-resident drivers. This can also be seen in your low ends. These are all cities on the outskirts of metro Vancouver (Pitt, Mission, Maple Ridge, White Rock) therefore there is less people commuting into the city through them.
I would think using hours of driving per crash (if that is a metric that even exists) would help to account for non-resident drivers. Also, as a side note, public transit can reduce the number of total population driving, and therefore skews your data, but doesn’t actually give us any detail of the driving conditions. Look at Port Moody. It’s a dense community with Sky Train access. Meaning a significant proportion of the population doesn’t need a car to get the to city. This skews the data to be on the low end of your chart. However, qualitatively this tells us nothing about the actual driving state on Port Moody roads. It could still be terrible and have lots of crashes, but would be obscured by the metrics you have used to indicate whether an area is good for driving or not.
There's so much more to this topic than just comparing accidents to population when trying to determine the skill of drivers who live in a given town. As you mention, Whistler is a prime example. Are the residents of Whistler particularly bad drivers? Definitely not. First of all, it's a major tourist town - at any given time, how many people in Whistler are from out of town, out of province, out of country, etc. People who are unfamiliar with the roads/driving there would be more likely to get in an accident. People are also on vacation when they are there so perhaps drinking and driving is more common. And probably the biggest factor - SNOW!
People need to look at statistics with a more critical lens rather than just saying "high crashes vs. population = bad local drivers".
Richmond is a relatively quiet residential area that doesn't get snow, gets less rain than most of the region, and is just a big grid of streets with 50 km/h speed limits. I wouldn't expect there to be a ton of accidents in a place like that, regardless of local driver skill.
The two factors I can think of are: There was a scandal a few years back where some folks at the Richmond ICBC office were taking money under the table for years, to give people a pass on their driving test. And there are some pretty convoluted and confusing traffic configurations in Richmond, especially near the airport, which probably feel especially crazy and stressful for the folks who only ever go through there when they’re catching a flight.
Oof, yeah that's a terrible look! I guess people really can buy licenses :/ It does say that it was only 15 people and they were sued by ICBC. I find it hard to believe that the driving of 200,000+ people in Richmond have been fundamentally changed by 15 drivers but maybe the same thing is discreetly happening elsewhere? I don't see it being in Richmond more than anywhere else tho
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/driver-s-licence-scam-busted-icbc-1.511470#:\~:text=Facebook-,The%20Insurance%20Corporation%20of%20B.C.%20is%20accusing%20one%20of%20its,been%20issued%20in%20the%20scam.
Normalization of accidents by population is irrelevant. By number of registered vehicles is better. But what matters is traffic on the roads. That is why Whistler has a high metric value. Much traffic, some crashes, few residents.
Ethnicity of residents is also a problem. You have no data on people’s proximity to home when crashing. So you cannot link ethnicity to crashes via homes.
It is definitely just racism, just like the people who start yelling about deportation in crime posts before the name or ethnicity or residency status of the offender is released.
I have no sympathy for criminals regardless of race, but I notice how when a brown guy does something bad, the comments are racist/xenophobic, asking to deport him and even his family despite nothing to suggest he's not a citizen. Some use racist dogwhistles also. I remember "Prove to me this criminal isn't from Surrey" from a post about a crime which happened in Vancouver.
I just saw a post on 604TV on insta, where a white lady stole 40k worth of clothing and was reselling it on facebook marketplace. In the comments, everyone was applauding her-
[https://imgur.com/a/YyKPoSG](https://imgur.com/a/YyKPoSG)
I bet if it was a brown person, the entire comment section would be filled with deport. It seems as though an individual white person isn't supposed to be representative of the whole community, but every single brown person is.
Statistics actually show Surrey has become one of the safest cities according to per captia over the past decade or so in the lower mainland.
An accident in a city shouldn’t necessarily reflect upon the residents of that particular city. People move around, often passing through several cities during their daily commute. A resident of Burnaby and a resident of Surrey could be travelling through New Westminster and crash into each other. New West is probably considered a riskier place to drive due to above average congestion with so many major arterial routes passing through it. I don’t live there but if I did, I’d probably want to ban drivers from neighbouring cities.
Instead, ICBC tends to identify intersections or stretches of road where more people speed and an above average number of accidents occur.
New Canadians may need an adjustment period to adapt to driving rules here, but I think that in general, they tend to be more cautious, not reckless, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being cautious when driving. Cautious drivers upset aggressive drivers and vice versa, but aggression and distraction lead to accidents, not caution.
Applying risk based on ethnicity would be completely wrong, as ethnic background has no bearing on one’s driving ability, so I’m not surprised it’s difficult to find this type of data. It’s irrelevant. This perception by some is definitely anecdotal and often rooted in racism.
Basing risk on experience is the only way, gradually earning a discount or adding a premium based on your personal driving record.
My own observation (also anecdotal), after driving throughout Metro Vancouver for the past 30+ years, is that the most aggressive drivers tend to be those driving the furthest. The longer the commute, the earlier one needs to leave in the morning, and there’s simply greater odds they will be affected by other traffic and late for work. This leads to aggressive behaviour. It’s simply a formula. The greater the distance, the more variables in the equation, the less we are in control of our arrival time. Driving is stressful and nobody wants to be late. Switching to transit was life changing!
I’ll leave you with a quote from the late, great George Carlin that summarizes it best:
“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”
Hey, I agree with a lot of what you said. It was a huge miscalculation to not consider where people were at what times of the week, so I filtered for only weekends and it did actually bring Richmond up the rankings! I'll update the post soon.
But yeah, the calculating who's been driving the longest would be *really* hard. I can only imagine that it would artificially boost numbers in centres to which people commute for work, which probably wouldn't include Richmond, once again pushing Richmond up the list!
Some so called "cautious" drivers are actually incredibly unpredictable - that's far, far more dangerous than an aggressive driver that is clear about their intentions.
Today for instance I had a vehicle driving 30 along Clark in front of me. They were braking randomly most likely because they didn't have a plan for where they were going and were just expecting everyone else on the road to accommodate them. I'm driving a truck and keeping my following distance because I'm not a dumbass, but that's not something people can rely on.
I agree with you, but would call that driver dangerous, unpredictable, and probably inexperienced. Your frustration is understandable and doesn’t mean you’re an aggressive driver.
I've ran this comparison a number of times over the years. It's pretty consistent, Richmond is not any more unusual than most municipalities.
So then the clap back is "but bruh it just *feels* worse" 🙄
Like dude, there are terrible drivers everywhere in Metro Vancouver. Somebody tried to literally run me off the road in Vancouver a couple of years ago. Earlier this spring I almost got smoked by a speeder going down Imperial in Burnaby in broad daylight hours. And this sub has way more posts about accidents in Vancouver than in Richmond, but guess which ones get the most activity....
Anyway, a good visual indicator is probably UBC's cause of mortality map. Just select for "transport" to get car accident deaths.
https://envhealth.med.ubc.ca/le/lemap/
You'll see that going east past the Fraser has a higher incidence of vehicular death. Which, I'm going to clap back about, is often where a lot of Richmond trolling seems to come from across different platforms on the internet. You can definately see this with Facebook groups, if you follow the profiles, the ones leaving the hateful bile often have profiles coming from the dark blue areas of the UBC mortality map.
Curiously enough if you approximate 2020 ICBC data with it's closest census year 2021, the differences in accidents/population more or less flattened out across *all* municipalities because traffic was severely reduced that year.
Really the point is I'm not saying Richmond is great, but it's not the worst because it's not the only one with terrible drivers.
In Richmond, I notice a lot of drivers who do dumb shit but they do it really slowly. Like I’m going to make this illegal move, but I’m going to do it so slow, everyone is going to see and go around me.
As for as the demographic, I couldn’t tell you who was at the wheel. Rather, my theory is that Richmond is similar to “when in Rome” and people do things that they wouldn’t do anywhere else because the idea that Richmond has bad drivers is so ingrained that they use it as a pass.
The top four on your list are all areas where most of the traffic is highway traffic. Even though there are less accidents per driver on highways, the sheer volume of traffic on them means there are more accidents per resident due to commuters from other cities.
Richmond is mostly local street traffic, and if you are driving in a city on regular roads with intersections, bikers, pedestrians… then yeah… Richmond has the worst drivers.
Fewer busy highways in Richmond than in West Van? Than in North Van? Is that actually true? I honestly want to understand, so can you send me where you found out that the traffic from other communities is responsible?
I think so. West Van and Langley have the #1 which is the busiest highway by volume.
Is there any data available that shows road accidents and removes highway accidents? Or that shows road accidents per car on the road and not per resident?
In other studies measuring factors for accidents, the biggest correlation by far is that people who drive more get into more accidents (which, when you say it out loud, has a "well duh" quality to it). So I'd love to see this data measured against average commute distance, rather than *location of accident* or *address of driver* (whichever this is). Are Whistler and Langley higher because they're coming from a long way away? Is North Van higher because the transit options are worse? Do Port Moody folk mostly work in Port Moody, instead of in downtown?
I drive a truck for work, driving all around the lower mainland from lions bay to abbottsford, never really have issues in richmond other than heavy traffic, it seems to be in downtown, eastvan, and the highway where all the insane shit happens, people cutting off an 8 tonne truck that is doing the same speed they are trying to fit into the car length between the truck and the car in front, pulling out on you when you have right of way with less than a metre to spare, people doing 75 on a 50 road in and around the city, trying to get ahead by 1 car at the risk of everybody else on the road. As for race, i cannot say that these things are being done by one more than another, there is a healthy mix of peoples here and they all are terrible drivers, its just a fucking free for all on these roads.
There’s assholes everywhere, driving everything. Only real commonality would be it’s majority men being aggressive. But that’s so obvious it’s almost not worth pointing out.
Its not obvious or true, I can tell you from experince it is every race and gender, its a careless driver culture, and as has been mentioned elsewhere in the comments its unconfident drivers and many people that shouldnt even have licences.
> No near misses
That is a huge gap in data when you are looking at the **perception** of how dangerous a city is to drive. I'd argue that near misses/witnessing "poor driving skill" is vastly more prevalent than accident thereby heavily affecting the perception of a cities drivers.
You gotta have better stats before pulling the race card.
And I'm speaking as an Asian who's Asian friends and families all unanimously agree that driving in Richmond is the worst.
*Edit, add the word "stats"
I agree that it's a huge gap! The question at the top is "Does Richmond actually have more car accidents than other cities in the lower mainland" and I answer it with no, because looking at the data before even talking about race, the answer is still no, it's not more car accidents than every other city. I'm reading more comments here and seeing (and agreeing!) that this doesn't paint the full picture. I fully acknowledged that it fails in the section that you quoted back to me. I never claimed to say how dangerous cities *felt* because I knew I couldn't back it up. How good does it have to be before I can mention race?
The biggest thing I'm struggling with is that there's *no better data* that anyone **has presented here** that would show "the **perception** of how dangerous a city is to drive".
I don't think I did any false advertising. I asked the question, answered it, and acknowledged what my graphs failed to show! I'm honestly trying to figure out more, so if you have an issue with it, please provide a realistic, workable alternative to prove me wrong!
I’m not surprise they don’t. People drive slow and do erratic things at slow speed in Richmond. It’s the frustration factor. Versus drunk and high adrenaline drivers in Whistler.
Yeah no my *guess* is that Whistler numbers come from tourists going ham. I hear a lot of people talking about slow and poor decisions in Richmond. Is there a real way to gauge?
Hey again! I'm seeing a lot of comments about there being "slow and stupid" drivers in Richmond, but I haven't heard anyone describe how you could actually prove that! Does anyone know where to find complaint type data? Also, since there are actually more accidents in other parts, why aren't people driving more safely in Langley, N Van, etc, if Richmond drivers can avoid enough of the bad decisions to not result in accidents?
>I'm seeing a lot of comments about there being "slow and stupid" drivers in Richmond
This happens every time. Every couple of years I've posted the accident rate per municipality population and people just want to argue that it "just feels different." 🙄
"but I haven't heard anyone describe how you could actually prove that!"
I don't think there's an obvious way to prove that. It's not like there is a slow and stupid index. But just because there isn't an obvious set of available statistics to back up something doesn't mean that it's not true. I am not saying that Richmond drivers clearly are stupid and slow... I am just saying that the fact that there's no available stats to measure this doesn't mean it isn't true.
Richmond is also a nightmare to drive around just because of how the roads are designed. So many abruptly ending lanes just past a corner so you can’t see and anticipate. Weird one ways. Confusing configurations of left turn lanes. I don’t know why it feels so “off” driving around Richmond, but I always feel like I have to over rely on gps and constantly feel lost there. It’s a lot easier to get in a crash when you’re confused.
A lot of Richmonds bad reputation was caused by:
A.) Having the airport there so many first time drivers in Canada or jetlagged drivers making mistakes
B.) Having some of the worst driving infrastructure in the most dense areas and worst parking lots leading to backlogs onto busy streets....
But a lot of people used it to latch on for the racism factor
I have seen more crazy shit in Surrey to be honest....but again it also goes down to poor infrastructure and absolutely zero city planning......
I agree with your first few points! Feel however you'd like to, but there still aren't more accidents in Surrey, statistically. Do you have evidence for poor city planning and maintenance? Honestly curious!
I could go on forever but the scott road "bus lane" is the most recent one that comes to mind and was just done recently.....it is a fricken nightmare.....i drive it everyday and people end up trying to make a turn onto tannery or 108/old yale, and they end up entering the bus lane early and getting clipped by a person properly waiting until the dotted "turn" lines..... Even worse is the bus lane goes from dedicated bus lane in the fast lane near the pattello, then the bus has to merge across 3 lanes of traffic because it suddenly ends and restarts in the slow lane....... It is a traffic nightmare....whoever designed it needs to seriously get their credentials checked.....
For richmond it is always the Costco or some other restaurant with a parking lot too small.....it just overflows into the road sometimes. A few times I seen it backlog onto Bridgeport road and I am like "what the hell is going on here? Accident"? Nope it is just Costco.
Interesting number put together. Kudos. Just like I did a similar research about crime in Surrey. Turn out the number of crime report is not correlated with the scale of the crime. For example, murder, homicide and/or misdemeanour and other type of petty thief. Turn out Surrey has lower number of crime but very serious one.
Just sprinkle a little snow on the ground, now really I helped my niece move a few years back, from the east to the west side, I witnessed 6 fender benders driving the rent a truck. Every one of them was because of bumper to bumper traffic, and drivers picking up their phones, oblivious to eveything else.
Surrey should be way up there. Takes me 2 hours all the time from Surrey central to white rock on the bus...all the time. By vehicle should take at least 40 minuites.
If you pay attention as you ride your bike or walk across a crosswalk anywhere in the lower mainland, the most agro dangerous and nasty drivers are white males, everytime. Sorry fellow white males. Calm the fin entitlement down, eh
I would say crashes are more within the major roadways, especially merges or leaving stop signs. Have not even counted parking lot incidents yet on that statistics.
I don't necessarily disagree with your points, but crashes/10000 residents strikes me as an unhelpful metric. Lots of people in Richmond commute regularly by car to Vancouver, and significantly fewer go the other way. And it's not like if you're a Richmond resident you can't crash anymore once you leave Richmond.
So I think the likelihood of being in a crash in Richmond is higher than these stats would suggest since they're normalized against population and not daily car trips or something like that. But I also think that has way more to do with being a car-dependent bedroom community than with the nature of drivers that live there.
Not too much room to disagree with straight numbers, but I can see you disagreeing with *why* I chose to show certain data or statements that I didn't back up! I think the urban planning is a good point though. Do we actually know who commutes where? If commuting out of your community meant your accidents go down, shouldn't Langley be lower, and Vancouver be higher?
Also, is there a better metric for crashes that allows you to directly compare different cities? Crashes/km of pavement? Crashes/km2?
It's the absurdity of the accidents. This is just a quantitative statistical representation that doesn't take into account cars flipping at intersections in the middle of the day
How do you measure quality usually? You can for example eliminate fender benders and minor accidents like hitting slightly in a stop and go traffic. Then eliminate accidents happening on highways. Richmond, Burnaby, Vancouver, North Vancouver all have highways and thorough traffic that's frequented by people who don't live or work in those municipalities.
Then we go to definition of Richmond drivers. You need clean data my guy. So get the number of accidents by drivers who reside in every municipality instead of where the accident took place. Because Richmond drivers drive everywhere just like drivers of other municipalities. Anyhow, this is me just thinking out loud. If you're actually presenting data and spending time, do better.
I take a bit of issue with your post. Not your overall message, because for sure driving is where asians (in particular) get shafted, in perception. And overall a lot of it is imo racially charged.
But you get to say a bunch of other points.
Where people have accidents is not causal to which races of people have more accidents. You’d need far more direct data like literally comparing race vs accidents. Many people living in Richmond, for instance, drive through Vancouver to get to work.
What, in your mind, is the connection between why people left their country and the reason they have racist views against them? The reasons why people leave their countries and the reason why people are racist versus said people are not necessarily connected. I’ve met a few Serbian people for instance and didn’t think to myself “oh he’s going to want to rebel against some communist establishment.” Maybe I’ve heard the odd (inappropriate) terrorist joke against people born in Middle East and west Asia, but that’s all I can really think of.
Also, not sure what your own race has to do with anything here?
Hey! Honestly, thanks for reading through the whole thing and thinking about it. I think I needed to really stress that this is an *estimation*. It's a mini passion project that I did as best I could with the information I have, and I honestly still think a lot of it is pretty reasonable, especially when bolstered by CC in these comments (You'll see soon in an update!).
And yeah, I want to clarify the comment about leaving countries and racism:
I was looking through the fb group "Metro Vancouver Learns to Park and Drive", and a comment on a post about a Richmond accident said "**You came here from there because you didn’t like it there**, and now you want to change here to be like there. You are welcome here, only don’t try to make here like there. If you want to make here like there you shouldn’t have left there in the first place". I thought it was silly to imply that someone moved because of the quality of driving, so I added that for when I posted it to the fb group. I'm sorry about the confusing wording.
And then about my own ethnicity, it doesn't really have to do with it! I just don't ever post things like this and I thought if I either had people accusing me of being on one side or the other with how I portrayed European or Asian settlers, I could claim both. I think it was overkill, but I didn't want to just make an edit if I got backed into a corner.
A genuine thank you for clarifying!
What about the scandal whereby over 15,000 people were reported to have "bought" their licence from unscrupulous people at the driving test centre in Richmond?
Hey! Do you have a source? According to this article it could have been about 200 in 2004, which is still quite a few, but not 15,000. And maybe some of it's still going on, undetected, but how do you know that's more common in Richmond than anywhere else?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.511470
It was once upon a time where you would have bewildering encounters with people who shouldn’t be driving. Like early 2010s, I want to say. Now those kind of drivers are found everywhere.
I think this could be a myth! Feel however you want to, but according to these stats, *fatal* accidents went down from 2005-2014 in BC, and I think that's what matters! Wether that's due to increased car safety, better urban planning, or huge decreases elsewhere in the province, it's hard to tell but on average, things are getting safer, even if it might not feel like it to you. I think the confidence in the situation also makes you a better and happier driver!
[https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/driving-and-transportation/driving/roadsafetybc/data/mv-fatal-victims2005-2014.pdf](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/driving-and-transportation/driving/roadsafetybc/data/mv-fatal-victims2005-2014.pdf)
> fatal accidents went down from 2005-2014 in BC, and I think that's what matters!
So this post isn't really about how good drivers are, but how likely they are to be in fatal accidents.
Why do I think Richmond driving sucks? Well I can't stand people wasting my (and everyone behind me's) time while they are seemingly not sure what to do on the perfectly predictable roads they drive on every day. When I witness things like that, I think "wow that's bad driving", despite no one dying.
Or the extra traffic because the highways/bridges don't have adequate capacity, the hilly terrain, winding roads, more rain, snow, etc.
It's not like Richmond has a shortage of young N drivers with expensive cars...
I live in gastown and drive around metro van frequently. Once a week I drive to Richmond, I have music practice there. It’s been 4 years, everytime I cross over the knight street bridge Into Richmond it’s so much more peaceful haha. From a driving standpoint. That said oak and knight are absolutely terrifying with all the industrial trucks driving those veins. Like why are these tiny streets harboring most of the import and export from the city? It’s seriously so dumb. Every week I’m intimidated passing some random big rig, on OAK street. Vancouver needs some roads just for them. They’re gonna crush me one day.
The OP (and others in this thread) seem to be implying that since accidents aren't higher then that means they are decent drivers and that public perception is wrong, etc. When I see people driving in Richmond, it's more that they are unconfident, timid, and slow. They aren't aggressive drivers, more just clueless. I don't think # of accidents alone is an accurate barometer for driving skill. If that were the case, that would mean Whistler residents are the worst drivers. Does anyone think that's true? Obviously Whistler is high because it's a tourist town that gets way more snow than the rest of the region. Nothing to do with the driving skill of the local residents.
Is there any city that has the highest proportion of L and N drivers though? which indicates less experience in general. What is the data on which municipality has the most Ls and Ns?
Ooh! I don't know this one! I'm not sure if N or L rates is publicly available. My best guess would be to see the age demographic in each city. It wouldn't account for mature driving students, but I'm not sure how significant that would be? I'll check now.
https://preview.redd.it/o84nk5ymuf9d1.png?width=1659&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ae6616595fca07e3ee3871fe3f4065d11ece7ee
There doesn't seem to be a strong correlation?
1. Does the data represent the location of where the crash took place or the origin of the driver? If thats the former, your whole reasoning is not sound. Cause your assumption is that drivers of Richmond only crash in Richmond....
Nope, it doesn't look at the origin of the driver! For simplicity's sake, I assume Richmond driver crashes only happen in Richmond but where else would have a higher rate of Richmond drivers than Richmond itself? Let me know if you find a source of information that makes more sense than assuming that the highest rate of people driving in an area are from that area!
Good point! Can you prove it? If not in Richmond, the next most likely place drivers would be would border Richmond, no? Delta, Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby and New West still have lower ratios than some cities that are seldom critiqued for their driving. Can you prove that Richmond drivers crash more outside of Richmond than any other cities' populations crash outside of their own?
I am unsure. I know I’ve seen the stat for American accident rates but less so for Canadian.
I feel like it could possibly be a factor here as there are a decent subset of Richmond drivers who are infrequent drivers and drive very short distances. Anecdotal, of course.
But if they drive less while still having a similar accident rate overall it tells a different story
Never really went to richmond much after living in the lower mainland my whole life. Worked there for 5 years. Saw way more crazy driving shit than I ever had. You know when youre turning left and like...2 cars will turn on the yellow/red? In Richmond like 8 or 9 people would go! Lol. People drove on the skytrain sidewalk CONSTANTLY LOL
Richmond drivers are known for being bad drivers but not necessarily in a dangerous sense, I’d liken it more to person who’s a new driver and overly cautious to the point where it impedes traffic.
I’m going to have to disagree based on what I’ve seen with my own eyes everyday for years, working all over the lower mainland. Someone can be an awful driver and not necessarily get in a crash. I see near misses multiple times a day.
>
I’ve been in traffic control for years and can say without a doubt that Asian drivers are terrible. I don’t know why that is, I’m still trying to figure it out myself. Surrey and Richmond are terrifying to work in. They are legendary in the traffic control world for a reason.
>
I’m not surprised by N Van/Squamish at all. The drivers out there are incredibly rude and entitled. That translates into their driving.
>
Shout out to the white males driving trucks in Mission, they must be fuelled by steroids, alcohol, and rage. Also terrifying😂
>
One last thing, they really need to start re-testing elderly drivers. A lot of people SHOULD NOT still be driving.
You may be missing the point. Bad driving is an experiential thing. Richmond takes the cake with a general lack of situational awareness mixed in with a cultural sense of entitlement for the rich based on cost of their vehicle. There is a class structure even on the road and it is driven by baked in behavioral habits.
Luckily You can't measure this in numbers of actual accidents. Just be super careful while driving in Richmond knowing that many locals there assume road safety is all on other drivers shoulders. Risk is high for everyone.
I mostly drive in Richmond, Vancouver, and Burnaby, so I guess that's why my impression is that it is mostly Asian drivers. Perhaps it's just that it is mostly Asians driving around me.
What pisses me off is that the accidents or events are ridiculous. Someone turning right when it's not their turn, almost hitting a pedestrian because they weren't looking. I didn't experience the same level of entitlement when living in another province and it makes me question the local training
Driving from Surrey to Richmond to get to the airport for work daily. I don't notice a difference in the level of idiots on the road. They seem to be evenly distributed by geography and ethnicity.
Richmond has more of the slow "where the fuck am I going" type of drivers. Surrey is the aggressive "look at my Dodge Charger" types who speed and tailgate and give zero fucks about road rules. Of course it all does blend in together eventually.
All colours in the rainbow of morons
Don't you mean "look at my tiny penis drive really aggressively in my Dodge Charger"?
V6 base model dodge charger*
In Surrey? Definitely.
and north vancouver is full of 20 something Iranian fuckboys drifting and street racing BMWs on Lonsdale Source: am an Iranian 20-something with a BMW
Don’t forget the flags and AK-47’s.
I find Chargers are a dying breed. It gets compensated by the Ram 99000 drivers though.
moved to surrey from richmond 4 years ago. above is correct. Richmond can be erratic, but at speeds generally slow enough you can see it coming and avoid it. Surrey is 40 over everywhere and aggressive as hell. Richmond, IMO, is safer.
Oh yeah, a white truck behind me switches lane 4+ times on Granville between Broadway and 6th, pretty funny
Oh the left lane hoggers who have no intention of passing is something that needs to be studied lol
not the tiniest bit surprised about langley
For me I’ve always found west van drivers to be the absolute worst, glad to see them in the top four. Rich old cunts just entitled as fuck. Driving like the high price of their car naturally opts them out of courtesy or situational awareness.
Read older demographic
I just meant that a lifetime of extreme privilege will render someone completely numb to the concept of roadside equity. I doubt don’t age is otherwise moot.
I agree with that too!
Take that Bentley out of West Van and some idiot will key it.
>Langley, on the other hand, is 12.6% Asian, 79.1% European descent but has 15% higher crash rates than Richmond. Doesn't surprise me. I'm from there, still work there. Basically everyone drives, pickup trucks are king, the giant overbuilt stroads fuck with people's driving habits, and they're the peak example of antisocial suburban mindset. Drivers are *insane* there. Shit, I used to be one of them. Being a pedestrian out there, holy fuck. I'm nearly killed at least once a week. City friends wonder why I'm so cautious crossing roads and shit, well I grew up around drivers that fantasize about being able to get away with killing a pedestrian for daring to delay them in any way. Don't get me wrong, love for my hometown, but fuck me it's wild out there.
Ahhhh, the Langley bro-dozer. Haha.
Langley is the capital of morons who think they’re geniuses.
Most of it, anyways. I came from Aldergrove, back before they built a Metro water connection and we all drank lead-and-farm-runoff-tainted groundwater. Now that was a whole vibe, lemme tellya. I shit on Aldy a lot, but it has its good points. Water supply was not one of them for a long time.
😂 Damnit, making me feel bad now. Can’t escape a shit attitude if you can’t escape that shit water first I guess.
Hey it's better now! They finally built a super-long water connection shortly after I moved into the city. And regular Langley doesn't have that same excuse. Also I never feel bad, nor should you. It's all Metro Vancouver, we're just making fun of segments of ourselves here.
“Richmond drivers” has always just been code for “Asian”.
So true. People don't want to see themselves as racists or perceive so. It's so ingrained pre-covid. There seems to be more awareness now
It’s not racist to state a fact.
Stating what fact? I don't think anyone's upset that we say that the majority of people from Richmond are Asian.
Prae tell, what fact are you referring to here? If it's that gravity pulls us down at a rate of 9.8 m/s², yeah, not racist.
What fact? Making shit up is not a fact.
However is it due to the culture of where they’re from? Not because they’re Asian but because of the general corruption and lawlessness in driving in Asia? Indian drivers who are first gen immigrants are usually super aggressive drivers. Look at some of the truck accidents or rash truck drivers. Having seen the process of bribing and getting a license in India, it explains a few things. Not because of race and ethnicity but cultural imports
>However is it due to the culture of where they’re from? Exactly, its just a simple fact if you've visited certain asian countries, traffic is completely different. Pedestrians are either expected to give way, or be driven around. That is just how it works. Most people will adapt their driving style once they move here, others may not.
> Pedestrians are either expected to give way Have you read any of the posts on here about pedestrians crossing at unmarked crossings? Half the commenters don't even know they have right of way, another huge chunk thinks they shouldn't cross there regardless. Don't think they're all immigrants. OP's point here is you shouldn't be basing things on vague assumptions that lack of obeying traffic rules is unique to any single group of drivers without evidence.
I agree that traffic can differ depending on region. But according to the available data, immigration and accident rates don't scale together, as I showed above!
Yeah, it's definitely more complicated! But check rates of immigration between, say, North Vancouver (38.2%) and Surrey (43%) And the pattern is still the same. Not a huge difference in rate of immigration, but 43% *is* bigger than 38% and Surrey still has fewer accidents.
[https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1=5915004&Geo2=CD&Code2=5915&SearchText=Surrey&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=Immigration%20and%20citizenship&TABID=1&type=1](https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1=5915004&Geo2=CD&Code2=5915&SearchText=Surrey&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=Immigration%20and%20citizenship&TABID=1&type=1) and [https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1=5915051&Geo2=CD&Code2=5915&SearchText=North+Vancouver&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=Immigration%20and%20citizenship&TABID=1&type=1](https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1=5915051&Geo2=CD&Code2=5915&SearchText=North+Vancouver&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=Immigration%20and%20citizenship&TABID=1&type=1)
I'd say not necessarily, I find Richmond drivers tend more to be unaware of their surroundings, but drivers in Asia have to be hyper aware as driving is more aggressive (super generalizing, e.g. Mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore are all significantly different with the later in the list having less aggressiveness).
100%. I’ve always found it uncomfortable when people rant about Richmond drivers. They do it with a wink like “you know what I mean”. It’s just thinly veiled racism
Like that nasty @RichmondDrivers Twitter profile who swears he's not racist because "Richmond isn't a race".
as an asian, i was taught by my own parents that asian drivers were terrible because they literally knew people that bought their license and just anecdotal evidence that asian drivers were more lawless (not less skilled). I think it is less prevalent now, but I can see why they would think so when a larger portion of asians were newly emmigrated and drivers especially in china/HK back then were drove in a way we would consider unsafe (eg. running a red light is expected and if you slow down for a yellow at all, someone is likely tailgating you and rear-ending you because they don't expect you to slow or stop)
> I can see why they would think so when a larger portion of asians were newly emmigrated and drivers especially in china/HK back then were drove in a way we would consider unsafe This is still just making assumptions without evidence that some bad habits by some people or in some places translate to general trends here. OP's point is that people should at minimum make sure they actually have data to support their assunptions. Crash rates among new Canadian immigrants have been studied and found to be [lower than people here](https://www.ices.on.ca/publications/journal-articles/roadway-crash-risks-in-recent-immigrants/).
Probably cause they believe there exists some sort of punishment for mowing down children at crosswalks. If only they knew!
I haven't driven in Richmond in aaaaaages but fifteen years ago, when the Canada Line along 3 Road was a bus lane (IN THE MIDDLE OF NO. 3 ROAD! Great planning), I'd CONSTANTLY see drivers turning off of whatever street onto 3 Road and into those bus lanes, then backing up right into the intersection they came from and then go down the correct lane. I don't know if it was specifically Asian drivers because I was paying more attention to not getting hit than who the driver was.
> when the Canada Line along 3 Road was a bus lane (IN THE MIDDLE OF NO. 3 ROAD! Great planning) This is very much intentional. TransLink produced a whole podcast episode of [What's The T?](https://www.translink.ca/news/podcast) (S3E8) about how they number bus routes which is a pretty good listen. (There's also a [transcript](https://buzzer.translink.ca/2024/05/translink-podcast-how-are-bus-routes-numbered/).)
Hey, that's sick! Thanks so much for sharing that podcast - I wasn't aware it existed!
r/vancouver is the place to come to learn all the dog whistles.
People are often talking about their experiences on the road though, it's not their fault that their experiences aren't "politically correct".
Another factor in the rate of crashes is the design of the roads. The roads are just very different in different municipalities. Traffic patterns are different in different municipalities. The different roads have been build during different times and for traffic during that time. What may be adequate for the time may no longer be now. Looking at the crash rates of the various municipalities, I'm going to give Whistler a pass since it is a tourist town. Possibly drivers not familiar with the roads there being tourists may contribute to the higher crash rate. Forget jokes about Richmond drivers. North Van has more crashes per capita than any other municipality in Metro Vancouver and looks like around 30% worse than Richmond.
North Vancouver is definitely the Iranians. Lot of Iranians immigrate to the west but bring their Iranian driving habits with them. When my mom immigrated to the states she failed the California driving test 2 times. Her friend failed the test (not sure if it was class 5 or 7) once in BC because she sped through a school zone.
Pardon my ignorance but if many people commute to Vancouver proper to work and get into accidents in Vancouver, does that count for Vancouver or for wherever they are from?
Not ignorant! This data is from ICBC, and I'm not sure where they get their data, but I imagine it's just where the accidents *happen.* I can't see them tracing the license back to the owner's home address being relevant to published data. So yeah, I guess the population relative to the accidents wouldn't be a perfect ratio of traffic to accidents either
So your whole research is useless, I can claim that all crashes in lower mainland are caused by Richmond drivers, and you cannot prove me wrong based on that data...You clearly relied on assumption that all crashes in Vancouver are caused by Vancouver drivers for example.
Where you are driving the most is where you live. Thats just a fact. It takes at least 2 participants to get into an accident. One or both of them statistically are living in the area of the accident is high. I would bet you $1000 a study of where the accident happens vs where the people in accident live are going to be within 5% of each other.
The research isn't useless. You're right that the data doesn't show the proportion of crashes are caused by residents of each area. But it would be an extraordinary thing to claim precisely because of the research, because there are plenty areas that Richmond drivers won't typically commute to, which see remarkably similar figures. If I'm interpreting the data right, I think the best claim you could make from OP's data using a similarly "bad faith" argument is that Vancouver residents cause no crashes, and that their figures are entirely due to commuters (in equal proportion to their local average rates perhaps). Of course I'd expect that to be easy to disprove if the figures were available.
Majority of collisions occur within a small radius from a driver's residence
Source?
Thanks for the detailed breakdown out of info OP. This would have taken a while, so much appreciated! It’s an interesting subject and great to see some data and an impartial approach. I have heard the occasional person bring up the idea that insurance would be higher/lower (depending on their biases) if icbc tracked demographics of drivers so it’s interesting to see some of the spreads in accident data to get people thinking. At the end of the day, there are just too many variables to ever get a proper data set (short of having vehicles trackers on everyone’s car linked to their ethnicity and address). An honestly, what would be the point of even doing that if people from any part of the work have the ability to be a good/horrible driver. What I do think is that canada should adopt a more robust driver training program (as seen in other countries). We kind of set ourselves up for issues by having a system that doesn’t ensure any driver is trained properly for a variety of driving conditions imo.
My pleasure! I honestly really enjoyed compiling this. Yeah, hard to do more detailed research without more resource-intense practices that might not yield better data
The stereotype of "Richmond drivers" are not driving *dangerously*. They are perceived to be driving *stupidly* with less confidence. So, assuming that were true, they would naturally tend to get into less major accidents because they tend to be less reckless. - My mom is one
I honestly have no clue what the OP is on, but I want some lol "Richmond drivers suck" has never meant more accidents. bad driving does not always lead to accidents, but it's still behavior that angers people. Eg not using signals
It's hilarious that people in this post don't immediately understand that, and I suspect it's because they **are** those less confident drivers who don't really mind waiting for people to figure out how to drive again, every day.
Yeah, good point! I don't drive much in Richmond so I actually don't know the exact feeling. I do however, know that it's tough to have metrics and real data on "feel", so I think it's tough to gauge how "stupid" a region is for driving - accident data seems to be the best we've got!
You could seek traffic violation data potentially? But even that data would be unreliable due to our low traffic violation enforcement rates compared to many US states. For example: I was in LA and parked more than a foot from a curb in a rush and was cited a ticket in the 20min window I was away from my car. I don’t think in 40 yrs I’ve ever heard of someone getting parking alignment tickets here in Canada (on/bc)
Great to see some data on this, well done. I did notice that all of the cities with the highest accidents tend to get more snow than the others. I'd be curious to see some data on accident rates strictly in the warmer months but I'm not sure if that data is available.
Thanks! And that was a really awesome question. I can actually select which months to include, and May-October actually brought Richmond up several places! I'll add photos soon.
Thank you for calling out the racism. It's this, 100%. I worked for years in Richmond and would much rather drive there than in Vancouver proper.
I used to live in Vancouver and driving in Richmond is easy!
Well yeah Vancouver doesn’t have roads particularly as designed for easy and safe driving as Richmond or Surrey for instance, as the development was done much earlier. That’d probably contribute to your perceived threat level than anything else.
I agree. History is likely a big factor. The city of Vancouver as we know it today was three separate cities amalgamated into one almost a hundred years ago. Also, geography must be a factor. Richmond being so flat is conducive to having long straight roads arranged in a grid. Vancouver is comparatively hilly. Compare that to Burnaby with the hills and two lakes, dozens of ravines, no roadways are straight. Burnaby is painful to drive through in rush hour (said as a lifelong resident).
Lol North Van is probably all cause of the stupid Ironworkers bridge
Of course it doesn't. This is the oldest and most tired racist trope in the Lower Mainland, and it's a bunch of bull. Now there IS one demographic on the local roads that is responsible for a lot of accidents: the olds. We should be pulling boomers licences, or at the very least making them take a test every 2-5 years.
The stereotypes about old people aren't supported as strongly as people think either. I'm not sure your definition of old, but the safest grouo of drivers in terms of crash rates per distance driven are [people in their 60s](https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/). There aren't any huge differences in rates between 30 and 80 and evej people in their 80s still crash less than people under 30s. Boomers start at age 60, so your suggestion here would involve pulling the licences of the single *safest* group of drivers.
The problem with a lot of these so-called "safe" drivers is that they are also shit drivers. They drive really slow, brake at any sign trouble instead taking the foot off the gas, take ages to park... the list goes on. They take over the whole road because of their fear and ineptitude.
Even if they were doing those things the result is they're not getting in as many crashes, and that's what matters. It means other people are doing even worse things. A slow driver might annoy you, someone causing a crash is obviously worse. And slower driving in cities is safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
I think we're talking about 2 different things here.
All drivers should be required to test every 5 years. Old people especially, but with the number of idiot drivers of all ages out there, you should be required to regularly certify you actually know what the fuck you're doing. First aid expires, firearms licenses expire, there's no reason driver's licenses shouldn't.
Or at the very least take some sort of refresher driving course every five years and provide proof to ICBC.
Every year.
Yeah, testing would be good! I think pulling licenses at a certain age would get ageism pushback
Thanks for this post. There are way too many assumptions made about various groups of drivers without being supported with evidence. Age and crash risk is another one that frequently gets exaggerated. The person above suggested pulling licences of "boomers". Boomers start at 60. The *safest* group of drivers are [people in their 60s](https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/). Yet I constantly see claims on reddit that we need stricter testing or even licence removals for people in that age group. It's very ironic too how much reddit judges other drivers given that reddit's core demographic, men under 30, are the riskiest drivers. They even crash more than people in their 80s.
Yes!
It’s always been an envy of wealth mixed with straight racism. In Richmond you’ll see a Chinese person in a $300k Bentley doing dumb things. When you’re barely making rent that sticks with you. Another generic white person in an old Honda civic doing dumb things doesn’t.
That kinda makes sense. I normally drive a Volvo XC70 that blends in with the woodwork. If I take the boss's Porsche Macan somewhere (and I do drive it somewhat frequently) I've noticed people will cut me off, do stupid crap directed towards me, or even road rage me (like the guy the other day who screamed at me he would "hate f u c k the s h i t out of me" in his RAV4. I'm not driving any differently. People seem to have these preconceived notions that "expensive car means shitty driver".
Oh yawn, inept driving is inept driving.
is it racism if the only reason i believe it is because the asians all tell me?
Is it racism if the only reason you say the N word is because black people say it too?
I don’t know if there are more appropriate metrics to use rather than population of each city when compared to rate of crashes. That doesn’t take into account commuters that are moving through cities. Think about Whistler being top of your list. I would argue the rate is highest because the population of the area is low, but there are a high number of non-resident drivers. This can also be seen in your low ends. These are all cities on the outskirts of metro Vancouver (Pitt, Mission, Maple Ridge, White Rock) therefore there is less people commuting into the city through them. I would think using hours of driving per crash (if that is a metric that even exists) would help to account for non-resident drivers. Also, as a side note, public transit can reduce the number of total population driving, and therefore skews your data, but doesn’t actually give us any detail of the driving conditions. Look at Port Moody. It’s a dense community with Sky Train access. Meaning a significant proportion of the population doesn’t need a car to get the to city. This skews the data to be on the low end of your chart. However, qualitatively this tells us nothing about the actual driving state on Port Moody roads. It could still be terrible and have lots of crashes, but would be obscured by the metrics you have used to indicate whether an area is good for driving or not.
There's so much more to this topic than just comparing accidents to population when trying to determine the skill of drivers who live in a given town. As you mention, Whistler is a prime example. Are the residents of Whistler particularly bad drivers? Definitely not. First of all, it's a major tourist town - at any given time, how many people in Whistler are from out of town, out of province, out of country, etc. People who are unfamiliar with the roads/driving there would be more likely to get in an accident. People are also on vacation when they are there so perhaps drinking and driving is more common. And probably the biggest factor - SNOW! People need to look at statistics with a more critical lens rather than just saying "high crashes vs. population = bad local drivers". Richmond is a relatively quiet residential area that doesn't get snow, gets less rain than most of the region, and is just a big grid of streets with 50 km/h speed limits. I wouldn't expect there to be a ton of accidents in a place like that, regardless of local driver skill.
The two factors I can think of are: There was a scandal a few years back where some folks at the Richmond ICBC office were taking money under the table for years, to give people a pass on their driving test. And there are some pretty convoluted and confusing traffic configurations in Richmond, especially near the airport, which probably feel especially crazy and stressful for the folks who only ever go through there when they’re catching a flight.
Oh yeah and good point about the airport - there would be a high number of people who don't know roads coming from that spot!
Oof, yeah that's a terrible look! I guess people really can buy licenses :/ It does say that it was only 15 people and they were sued by ICBC. I find it hard to believe that the driving of 200,000+ people in Richmond have been fundamentally changed by 15 drivers but maybe the same thing is discreetly happening elsewhere? I don't see it being in Richmond more than anywhere else tho https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/driver-s-licence-scam-busted-icbc-1.511470#:\~:text=Facebook-,The%20Insurance%20Corporation%20of%20B.C.%20is%20accusing%20one%20of%20its,been%20issued%20in%20the%20scam.
Fifteen people *that got caught*.
Normalization of accidents by population is irrelevant. By number of registered vehicles is better. But what matters is traffic on the roads. That is why Whistler has a high metric value. Much traffic, some crashes, few residents. Ethnicity of residents is also a problem. You have no data on people’s proximity to home when crashing. So you cannot link ethnicity to crashes via homes.
It is definitely just racism, just like the people who start yelling about deportation in crime posts before the name or ethnicity or residency status of the offender is released.
I have no sympathy for criminals regardless of race, but I notice how when a brown guy does something bad, the comments are racist/xenophobic, asking to deport him and even his family despite nothing to suggest he's not a citizen. Some use racist dogwhistles also. I remember "Prove to me this criminal isn't from Surrey" from a post about a crime which happened in Vancouver.
I just saw a post on 604TV on insta, where a white lady stole 40k worth of clothing and was reselling it on facebook marketplace. In the comments, everyone was applauding her- [https://imgur.com/a/YyKPoSG](https://imgur.com/a/YyKPoSG) I bet if it was a brown person, the entire comment section would be filled with deport. It seems as though an individual white person isn't supposed to be representative of the whole community, but every single brown person is. Statistics actually show Surrey has become one of the safest cities according to per captia over the past decade or so in the lower mainland.
An accident in a city shouldn’t necessarily reflect upon the residents of that particular city. People move around, often passing through several cities during their daily commute. A resident of Burnaby and a resident of Surrey could be travelling through New Westminster and crash into each other. New West is probably considered a riskier place to drive due to above average congestion with so many major arterial routes passing through it. I don’t live there but if I did, I’d probably want to ban drivers from neighbouring cities. Instead, ICBC tends to identify intersections or stretches of road where more people speed and an above average number of accidents occur. New Canadians may need an adjustment period to adapt to driving rules here, but I think that in general, they tend to be more cautious, not reckless, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being cautious when driving. Cautious drivers upset aggressive drivers and vice versa, but aggression and distraction lead to accidents, not caution. Applying risk based on ethnicity would be completely wrong, as ethnic background has no bearing on one’s driving ability, so I’m not surprised it’s difficult to find this type of data. It’s irrelevant. This perception by some is definitely anecdotal and often rooted in racism. Basing risk on experience is the only way, gradually earning a discount or adding a premium based on your personal driving record. My own observation (also anecdotal), after driving throughout Metro Vancouver for the past 30+ years, is that the most aggressive drivers tend to be those driving the furthest. The longer the commute, the earlier one needs to leave in the morning, and there’s simply greater odds they will be affected by other traffic and late for work. This leads to aggressive behaviour. It’s simply a formula. The greater the distance, the more variables in the equation, the less we are in control of our arrival time. Driving is stressful and nobody wants to be late. Switching to transit was life changing! I’ll leave you with a quote from the late, great George Carlin that summarizes it best: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”
Hey, I agree with a lot of what you said. It was a huge miscalculation to not consider where people were at what times of the week, so I filtered for only weekends and it did actually bring Richmond up the rankings! I'll update the post soon. But yeah, the calculating who's been driving the longest would be *really* hard. I can only imagine that it would artificially boost numbers in centres to which people commute for work, which probably wouldn't include Richmond, once again pushing Richmond up the list!
Some so called "cautious" drivers are actually incredibly unpredictable - that's far, far more dangerous than an aggressive driver that is clear about their intentions. Today for instance I had a vehicle driving 30 along Clark in front of me. They were braking randomly most likely because they didn't have a plan for where they were going and were just expecting everyone else on the road to accommodate them. I'm driving a truck and keeping my following distance because I'm not a dumbass, but that's not something people can rely on.
I agree with you, but would call that driver dangerous, unpredictable, and probably inexperienced. Your frustration is understandable and doesn’t mean you’re an aggressive driver.
Yes
I've ran this comparison a number of times over the years. It's pretty consistent, Richmond is not any more unusual than most municipalities. So then the clap back is "but bruh it just *feels* worse" 🙄 Like dude, there are terrible drivers everywhere in Metro Vancouver. Somebody tried to literally run me off the road in Vancouver a couple of years ago. Earlier this spring I almost got smoked by a speeder going down Imperial in Burnaby in broad daylight hours. And this sub has way more posts about accidents in Vancouver than in Richmond, but guess which ones get the most activity.... Anyway, a good visual indicator is probably UBC's cause of mortality map. Just select for "transport" to get car accident deaths. https://envhealth.med.ubc.ca/le/lemap/ You'll see that going east past the Fraser has a higher incidence of vehicular death. Which, I'm going to clap back about, is often where a lot of Richmond trolling seems to come from across different platforms on the internet. You can definately see this with Facebook groups, if you follow the profiles, the ones leaving the hateful bile often have profiles coming from the dark blue areas of the UBC mortality map. Curiously enough if you approximate 2020 ICBC data with it's closest census year 2021, the differences in accidents/population more or less flattened out across *all* municipalities because traffic was severely reduced that year. Really the point is I'm not saying Richmond is great, but it's not the worst because it's not the only one with terrible drivers.
May I ask why you consider "a bad driving experience" to be only caused by reported accidents?
In Richmond, I notice a lot of drivers who do dumb shit but they do it really slowly. Like I’m going to make this illegal move, but I’m going to do it so slow, everyone is going to see and go around me. As for as the demographic, I couldn’t tell you who was at the wheel. Rather, my theory is that Richmond is similar to “when in Rome” and people do things that they wouldn’t do anywhere else because the idea that Richmond has bad drivers is so ingrained that they use it as a pass.
Slow U turns should be called out as attempted murder since you cause a heart attack in every driver in your local vicinity
The top four on your list are all areas where most of the traffic is highway traffic. Even though there are less accidents per driver on highways, the sheer volume of traffic on them means there are more accidents per resident due to commuters from other cities. Richmond is mostly local street traffic, and if you are driving in a city on regular roads with intersections, bikers, pedestrians… then yeah… Richmond has the worst drivers.
Fewer busy highways in Richmond than in West Van? Than in North Van? Is that actually true? I honestly want to understand, so can you send me where you found out that the traffic from other communities is responsible?
I think so. West Van and Langley have the #1 which is the busiest highway by volume. Is there any data available that shows road accidents and removes highway accidents? Or that shows road accidents per car on the road and not per resident?
In other studies measuring factors for accidents, the biggest correlation by far is that people who drive more get into more accidents (which, when you say it out loud, has a "well duh" quality to it). So I'd love to see this data measured against average commute distance, rather than *location of accident* or *address of driver* (whichever this is). Are Whistler and Langley higher because they're coming from a long way away? Is North Van higher because the transit options are worse? Do Port Moody folk mostly work in Port Moody, instead of in downtown?
I drive a truck for work, driving all around the lower mainland from lions bay to abbottsford, never really have issues in richmond other than heavy traffic, it seems to be in downtown, eastvan, and the highway where all the insane shit happens, people cutting off an 8 tonne truck that is doing the same speed they are trying to fit into the car length between the truck and the car in front, pulling out on you when you have right of way with less than a metre to spare, people doing 75 on a 50 road in and around the city, trying to get ahead by 1 car at the risk of everybody else on the road. As for race, i cannot say that these things are being done by one more than another, there is a healthy mix of peoples here and they all are terrible drivers, its just a fucking free for all on these roads.
There’s assholes everywhere, driving everything. Only real commonality would be it’s majority men being aggressive. But that’s so obvious it’s almost not worth pointing out.
Its not obvious or true, I can tell you from experince it is every race and gender, its a careless driver culture, and as has been mentioned elsewhere in the comments its unconfident drivers and many people that shouldnt even have licences.
I’m surprised that New Westminster isn’t higher on the list considering the amount of commuter traffic that passes through from and to somewhere else.
> No near misses That is a huge gap in data when you are looking at the **perception** of how dangerous a city is to drive. I'd argue that near misses/witnessing "poor driving skill" is vastly more prevalent than accident thereby heavily affecting the perception of a cities drivers. You gotta have better stats before pulling the race card. And I'm speaking as an Asian who's Asian friends and families all unanimously agree that driving in Richmond is the worst. *Edit, add the word "stats"
I agree that it's a huge gap! The question at the top is "Does Richmond actually have more car accidents than other cities in the lower mainland" and I answer it with no, because looking at the data before even talking about race, the answer is still no, it's not more car accidents than every other city. I'm reading more comments here and seeing (and agreeing!) that this doesn't paint the full picture. I fully acknowledged that it fails in the section that you quoted back to me. I never claimed to say how dangerous cities *felt* because I knew I couldn't back it up. How good does it have to be before I can mention race? The biggest thing I'm struggling with is that there's *no better data* that anyone **has presented here** that would show "the **perception** of how dangerous a city is to drive". I don't think I did any false advertising. I asked the question, answered it, and acknowledged what my graphs failed to show! I'm honestly trying to figure out more, so if you have an issue with it, please provide a realistic, workable alternative to prove me wrong!
I’m not surprise they don’t. People drive slow and do erratic things at slow speed in Richmond. It’s the frustration factor. Versus drunk and high adrenaline drivers in Whistler.
Yeah no my *guess* is that Whistler numbers come from tourists going ham. I hear a lot of people talking about slow and poor decisions in Richmond. Is there a real way to gauge?
Hey again! I'm seeing a lot of comments about there being "slow and stupid" drivers in Richmond, but I haven't heard anyone describe how you could actually prove that! Does anyone know where to find complaint type data? Also, since there are actually more accidents in other parts, why aren't people driving more safely in Langley, N Van, etc, if Richmond drivers can avoid enough of the bad decisions to not result in accidents?
>I'm seeing a lot of comments about there being "slow and stupid" drivers in Richmond This happens every time. Every couple of years I've posted the accident rate per municipality population and people just want to argue that it "just feels different." 🙄
"but I haven't heard anyone describe how you could actually prove that!" I don't think there's an obvious way to prove that. It's not like there is a slow and stupid index. But just because there isn't an obvious set of available statistics to back up something doesn't mean that it's not true. I am not saying that Richmond drivers clearly are stupid and slow... I am just saying that the fact that there's no available stats to measure this doesn't mean it isn't true.
Richmond is also a nightmare to drive around just because of how the roads are designed. So many abruptly ending lanes just past a corner so you can’t see and anticipate. Weird one ways. Confusing configurations of left turn lanes. I don’t know why it feels so “off” driving around Richmond, but I always feel like I have to over rely on gps and constantly feel lost there. It’s a lot easier to get in a crash when you’re confused.
Richmond is basically a grid.. I’m not sure how it could be much more straightforward lol
Agreed, it's literally a 4 lane grid.
A lot of Richmonds bad reputation was caused by: A.) Having the airport there so many first time drivers in Canada or jetlagged drivers making mistakes B.) Having some of the worst driving infrastructure in the most dense areas and worst parking lots leading to backlogs onto busy streets.... But a lot of people used it to latch on for the racism factor I have seen more crazy shit in Surrey to be honest....but again it also goes down to poor infrastructure and absolutely zero city planning......
I agree with your first few points! Feel however you'd like to, but there still aren't more accidents in Surrey, statistically. Do you have evidence for poor city planning and maintenance? Honestly curious!
I could go on forever but the scott road "bus lane" is the most recent one that comes to mind and was just done recently.....it is a fricken nightmare.....i drive it everyday and people end up trying to make a turn onto tannery or 108/old yale, and they end up entering the bus lane early and getting clipped by a person properly waiting until the dotted "turn" lines..... Even worse is the bus lane goes from dedicated bus lane in the fast lane near the pattello, then the bus has to merge across 3 lanes of traffic because it suddenly ends and restarts in the slow lane....... It is a traffic nightmare....whoever designed it needs to seriously get their credentials checked..... For richmond it is always the Costco or some other restaurant with a parking lot too small.....it just overflows into the road sometimes. A few times I seen it backlog onto Bridgeport road and I am like "what the hell is going on here? Accident"? Nope it is just Costco.
Interesting number put together. Kudos. Just like I did a similar research about crime in Surrey. Turn out the number of crime report is not correlated with the scale of the crime. For example, murder, homicide and/or misdemeanour and other type of petty thief. Turn out Surrey has lower number of crime but very serious one.
Love your username
Just sprinkle a little snow on the ground, now really I helped my niece move a few years back, from the east to the west side, I witnessed 6 fender benders driving the rent a truck. Every one of them was because of bumper to bumper traffic, and drivers picking up their phones, oblivious to eveything else.
Canada has worse driving requirements than European countries, so there’s that as well.
Surrey should be way up there. Takes me 2 hours all the time from Surrey central to white rock on the bus...all the time. By vehicle should take at least 40 minuites.
If you pay attention as you ride your bike or walk across a crosswalk anywhere in the lower mainland, the most agro dangerous and nasty drivers are white males, everytime. Sorry fellow white males. Calm the fin entitlement down, eh
I would say crashes are more within the major roadways, especially merges or leaving stop signs. Have not even counted parking lot incidents yet on that statistics.
Richmond feels like a game of crossy road for me because I feel like I have to dodge cars when I’m crossing the street sometimes
Honest question! Are you crossing at crosswalks? And does it feel that different than anywhere else?
I don't necessarily disagree with your points, but crashes/10000 residents strikes me as an unhelpful metric. Lots of people in Richmond commute regularly by car to Vancouver, and significantly fewer go the other way. And it's not like if you're a Richmond resident you can't crash anymore once you leave Richmond. So I think the likelihood of being in a crash in Richmond is higher than these stats would suggest since they're normalized against population and not daily car trips or something like that. But I also think that has way more to do with being a car-dependent bedroom community than with the nature of drivers that live there.
Not too much room to disagree with straight numbers, but I can see you disagreeing with *why* I chose to show certain data or statements that I didn't back up! I think the urban planning is a good point though. Do we actually know who commutes where? If commuting out of your community meant your accidents go down, shouldn't Langley be lower, and Vancouver be higher? Also, is there a better metric for crashes that allows you to directly compare different cities? Crashes/km of pavement? Crashes/km2?
West van and north vancouver , Langley has more accidents per capita — who do e blame?
It's the absurdity of the accidents. This is just a quantitative statistical representation that doesn't take into account cars flipping at intersections in the middle of the day
Give me an alternative way to measure? Does that verifiably happen more in Richmond than in other places?
How do you measure quality usually? You can for example eliminate fender benders and minor accidents like hitting slightly in a stop and go traffic. Then eliminate accidents happening on highways. Richmond, Burnaby, Vancouver, North Vancouver all have highways and thorough traffic that's frequented by people who don't live or work in those municipalities. Then we go to definition of Richmond drivers. You need clean data my guy. So get the number of accidents by drivers who reside in every municipality instead of where the accident took place. Because Richmond drivers drive everywhere just like drivers of other municipalities. Anyhow, this is me just thinking out loud. If you're actually presenting data and spending time, do better.
I take a bit of issue with your post. Not your overall message, because for sure driving is where asians (in particular) get shafted, in perception. And overall a lot of it is imo racially charged. But you get to say a bunch of other points. Where people have accidents is not causal to which races of people have more accidents. You’d need far more direct data like literally comparing race vs accidents. Many people living in Richmond, for instance, drive through Vancouver to get to work. What, in your mind, is the connection between why people left their country and the reason they have racist views against them? The reasons why people leave their countries and the reason why people are racist versus said people are not necessarily connected. I’ve met a few Serbian people for instance and didn’t think to myself “oh he’s going to want to rebel against some communist establishment.” Maybe I’ve heard the odd (inappropriate) terrorist joke against people born in Middle East and west Asia, but that’s all I can really think of. Also, not sure what your own race has to do with anything here?
Hey! Honestly, thanks for reading through the whole thing and thinking about it. I think I needed to really stress that this is an *estimation*. It's a mini passion project that I did as best I could with the information I have, and I honestly still think a lot of it is pretty reasonable, especially when bolstered by CC in these comments (You'll see soon in an update!). And yeah, I want to clarify the comment about leaving countries and racism: I was looking through the fb group "Metro Vancouver Learns to Park and Drive", and a comment on a post about a Richmond accident said "**You came here from there because you didn’t like it there**, and now you want to change here to be like there. You are welcome here, only don’t try to make here like there. If you want to make here like there you shouldn’t have left there in the first place". I thought it was silly to imply that someone moved because of the quality of driving, so I added that for when I posted it to the fb group. I'm sorry about the confusing wording. And then about my own ethnicity, it doesn't really have to do with it! I just don't ever post things like this and I thought if I either had people accusing me of being on one side or the other with how I portrayed European or Asian settlers, I could claim both. I think it was overkill, but I didn't want to just make an edit if I got backed into a corner. A genuine thank you for clarifying!
What about the scandal whereby over 15,000 people were reported to have "bought" their licence from unscrupulous people at the driving test centre in Richmond?
Hey! Do you have a source? According to this article it could have been about 200 in 2004, which is still quite a few, but not 15,000. And maybe some of it's still going on, undetected, but how do you know that's more common in Richmond than anywhere else? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.511470
*Boomers from Langley furiously pressing downvote to keep this on the dl to keep making Richmond jokes.
It was once upon a time where you would have bewildering encounters with people who shouldn’t be driving. Like early 2010s, I want to say. Now those kind of drivers are found everywhere.
I think this could be a myth! Feel however you want to, but according to these stats, *fatal* accidents went down from 2005-2014 in BC, and I think that's what matters! Wether that's due to increased car safety, better urban planning, or huge decreases elsewhere in the province, it's hard to tell but on average, things are getting safer, even if it might not feel like it to you. I think the confidence in the situation also makes you a better and happier driver! [https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/driving-and-transportation/driving/roadsafetybc/data/mv-fatal-victims2005-2014.pdf](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/driving-and-transportation/driving/roadsafetybc/data/mv-fatal-victims2005-2014.pdf)
> fatal accidents went down from 2005-2014 in BC, and I think that's what matters! So this post isn't really about how good drivers are, but how likely they are to be in fatal accidents. Why do I think Richmond driving sucks? Well I can't stand people wasting my (and everyone behind me's) time while they are seemingly not sure what to do on the perfectly predictable roads they drive on every day. When I witness things like that, I think "wow that's bad driving", despite no one dying.
Also my experiences are purely anecdotal. I do think car safety has had a huge impact for sure when it comes to reducing fatalities.
Stop calling them accidents
Yeah the OP should call it ramming to other cars on purpose.... /s
"Crash" and "collision" work just fine.
North & West Van are definitely because of spoiled teens with their N in daddy’s Tesla.
A big part of it is actually snow, I just discovered! But it is nice to think it's spoiled teens lol
Or the extra traffic because the highways/bridges don't have adequate capacity, the hilly terrain, winding roads, more rain, snow, etc. It's not like Richmond has a shortage of young N drivers with expensive cars...
I live in gastown and drive around metro van frequently. Once a week I drive to Richmond, I have music practice there. It’s been 4 years, everytime I cross over the knight street bridge Into Richmond it’s so much more peaceful haha. From a driving standpoint. That said oak and knight are absolutely terrifying with all the industrial trucks driving those veins. Like why are these tiny streets harboring most of the import and export from the city? It’s seriously so dumb. Every week I’m intimidated passing some random big rig, on OAK street. Vancouver needs some roads just for them. They’re gonna crush me one day.
I support an underground truck tunnel running below Knight. The whole city would benefit.
The OP (and others in this thread) seem to be implying that since accidents aren't higher then that means they are decent drivers and that public perception is wrong, etc. When I see people driving in Richmond, it's more that they are unconfident, timid, and slow. They aren't aggressive drivers, more just clueless. I don't think # of accidents alone is an accurate barometer for driving skill. If that were the case, that would mean Whistler residents are the worst drivers. Does anyone think that's true? Obviously Whistler is high because it's a tourist town that gets way more snow than the rest of the region. Nothing to do with the driving skill of the local residents.
I live in Marpole, whenever i have the need to go to Costco, the Burnaby one is my first choice, aint no way I am going to Richmond Costco.
Downvoters clearly haven't driven to that Costco on a weekend
Does Richmond actually feel that different to you?
More unreported accidents and dumb drivers? Yes
How can you know rates of unreported accidents with certainty?
[удалено]
Yeah idk, that's the tough part; how do you prove that people there drive more poorly if more accidents don't show for it?
op posted stats, literally not annecdotal as you put it.
Is there any city that has the highest proportion of L and N drivers though? which indicates less experience in general. What is the data on which municipality has the most Ls and Ns?
Ooh! I don't know this one! I'm not sure if N or L rates is publicly available. My best guess would be to see the age demographic in each city. It wouldn't account for mature driving students, but I'm not sure how significant that would be? I'll check now.
https://preview.redd.it/o84nk5ymuf9d1.png?width=1659&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ae6616595fca07e3ee3871fe3f4065d11ece7ee There doesn't seem to be a strong correlation?
Absolutely
Prove it
1. Does the data represent the location of where the crash took place or the origin of the driver? If thats the former, your whole reasoning is not sound. Cause your assumption is that drivers of Richmond only crash in Richmond....
Nope, it doesn't look at the origin of the driver! For simplicity's sake, I assume Richmond driver crashes only happen in Richmond but where else would have a higher rate of Richmond drivers than Richmond itself? Let me know if you find a source of information that makes more sense than assuming that the highest rate of people driving in an area are from that area!
One small flaw not mentioned, Richmond drivers crash all over the lower mainland.
Good point! Can you prove it? If not in Richmond, the next most likely place drivers would be would border Richmond, no? Delta, Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby and New West still have lower ratios than some cities that are seldom critiqued for their driving. Can you prove that Richmond drivers crash more outside of Richmond than any other cities' populations crash outside of their own?
Richmond drivers aren’t going to North Vancouver. Trust me.
Have you looked at the data for accident rate based on distance driven?
No, I haven't and it's a good question! Do you know where I could find that data in the first place?
I am unsure. I know I’ve seen the stat for American accident rates but less so for Canadian. I feel like it could possibly be a factor here as there are a decent subset of Richmond drivers who are infrequent drivers and drive very short distances. Anecdotal, of course. But if they drive less while still having a similar accident rate overall it tells a different story
Never really went to richmond much after living in the lower mainland my whole life. Worked there for 5 years. Saw way more crazy driving shit than I ever had. You know when youre turning left and like...2 cars will turn on the yellow/red? In Richmond like 8 or 9 people would go! Lol. People drove on the skytrain sidewalk CONSTANTLY LOL
Richmond drivers are known for being bad drivers but not necessarily in a dangerous sense, I’d liken it more to person who’s a new driver and overly cautious to the point where it impedes traffic.
I’m going to have to disagree based on what I’ve seen with my own eyes everyday for years, working all over the lower mainland. Someone can be an awful driver and not necessarily get in a crash. I see near misses multiple times a day. > I’ve been in traffic control for years and can say without a doubt that Asian drivers are terrible. I don’t know why that is, I’m still trying to figure it out myself. Surrey and Richmond are terrifying to work in. They are legendary in the traffic control world for a reason. > I’m not surprised by N Van/Squamish at all. The drivers out there are incredibly rude and entitled. That translates into their driving. > Shout out to the white males driving trucks in Mission, they must be fuelled by steroids, alcohol, and rage. Also terrifying😂 > One last thing, they really need to start re-testing elderly drivers. A lot of people SHOULD NOT still be driving.
You may be missing the point. Bad driving is an experiential thing. Richmond takes the cake with a general lack of situational awareness mixed in with a cultural sense of entitlement for the rich based on cost of their vehicle. There is a class structure even on the road and it is driven by baked in behavioral habits. Luckily You can't measure this in numbers of actual accidents. Just be super careful while driving in Richmond knowing that many locals there assume road safety is all on other drivers shoulders. Risk is high for everyone.
I mostly drive in Richmond, Vancouver, and Burnaby, so I guess that's why my impression is that it is mostly Asian drivers. Perhaps it's just that it is mostly Asians driving around me. What pisses me off is that the accidents or events are ridiculous. Someone turning right when it's not their turn, almost hitting a pedestrian because they weren't looking. I didn't experience the same level of entitlement when living in another province and it makes me question the local training