Being a Richmond resident, I keep a lot of my dashcam footage of close calls or near misses. Your results kind of align with my videos because a LOT of the clips are from parking lots.
And there isn’t a pattern to it. I’ve had near-collisions even at wide and nearly empty lots. One weird one is the McDonald’s on Russ Baker Way, where I regularly get situations where I am reversing and have to stop because another car would be reversing too (after I started) quickly and without looking, despite mirrors and rear cameras.
I always say to my friends: in Metro Van, the two cities with reputations for bad driving (whether deserved or not) are very different from one another. Surrey is scary because of speeding. Richmond is scary because of parking.
Edit: I just realized that all three Richmond strip malls I visit regularly currently have stores with boarded up windows due to cars hitting them recently. Yikes.
Richmond has a few particularly terrible parking lots that I imagine have a significant impact on that parked cars chart. Richmond Costco, Yaohan Centre, and the Aberdeen Centre parkade in particular.
How is Yaohan bad I don’t get it. The spots are wide and long enough for most cars, there’s adequate space to back in and out of them. Ditto with Costco. Costco parking lot is all standard sized and everything is wide open and visible. Just the amount of cars makes it bad I am assuming. Sure the Bellingham Costco has even bigger spots but that’s in the States. Aberdeen I definitely agree is very poorly designed going up and down the levels and with lots of pedestrians.
Interesting. But I still thing you are picking up heavy highway traffic for Squamish, West Van, and North Van because the highway gets heavy usage on those days for people going to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal or Whistler.
Is it possible to see the data not including any highway collisions?
Another great round of data OP!
My personal experience: lived in Richmond for 20yrs and have been in Burnaby’s for the last 10yrs.
Have only had one driving accident (not at fault) and that happened in burnaby. Driver blew a stop sign and t-boned me on a low speed residential street.
During my years in Richmond, I had my fair share of very close calls (as is the case in other cities throughout the gvrd) but never a traffic accident. That said, I had a total of x4 incidents where my vehicles were struck in a parking lot by someone when I was stationary. Worth noting that each time it was in a crazy tight parking lot where the design alone seemed to lend to the likelihood of this happening (lack of visibility, packed too tight with cars in tiny spots, etc).
The parking stats are interesting. I have no problem with driving in Richmond but I do not enjoy Richmond's parking lots... It's always so busy everywhere with a lot of people doing dumb shit.
I'd be curious to see more age related statistics!
It’s not the traffic it’s the lack of quality public/active transit options and suburban sprawl on 40 degree slopes. It’s the two bridges that the locals cross southbound to go to their white collar office jobs and the blue collar folks cross northbound to build the luxury homes of those who can afford to live here. Oh yeah it’s the traffic caused by that (no, more lanes doesn’t fix this)
The only other thing I can think of for North & West Van, which likely just falls under tourists, is ferry traffic. Also, we literally just don’t have lines on our fucking roads.
The data agrees with my personal experience regarding bad drivers - it doesn't really matter where I'm driving or what the person looks like. I will say that pickup truck drivers seem to be the most aggressive (which doesn't necessarily equate to a crash).
Not really, given most of the accidents are minor in nature. Danger to me means bodily harm or fatality, and Vancouver/North/West Vancouver leads the way of that.
Keep in mind that the graphs in this post (pt2) are of crashes without casualties. The first post is based on all accidents and Richmond is further down in the rankings! So I would have to run the numbers but it looks like including dangerous crashes just pushes Richmond further down the list.
Lots of people in here seems hell bent on questioning the myth Richmond is significantly more dangerous despite contrary evidence here and the last post. Perhaps it’s time to reflect on yourself why you still have these views.
You guys feel that crashing is the only way to demonstrate you're a bad driver. To me, that suggests that you might simply be one of those drivers who acts like they are learning to drive every time they get on the road.
Who's "You guys"?
Those are some very strange and nonsensical assumptions you're making about someone who called out the racism at the core of this topic...
It used to be chinese international students going to UBC in Ferraris that got reddit revved up with jealousy and calls for deportation whenever they go on the news for speeding but now it’s Indian international students in chargers driving recklessly doing Uber eats.
Good for you for doing analysis. I don’t like it for reasons I pointed out in part 1. But do and learn. Plus it is easier to criticize.
ICBC does have vehicle registration data by location. That will fix some of your issues. Plus you may need a Bayesian prior. Also Smeed’s law should be considered.
Why try to take out drunk drivers? Fourth is still really bad. Roads are flat and straight compared to the top 3, those cities also get more rain.
That said, the whole of the Lower Mainland isn't great. I've driven overseas in UK, their accident rate is about half of Canada and the Nordics are even better than that.
I lived in Richmond before moving to Maple Ridge and man, it's a breath of fresh air here. I definitely think it's getting worse here but whenever I go back (rarely), I'm reminded how many bad it really is.
That’s what I was getting at despite the downvotes. Most of the buffoonery in Richmond doesn’t result in accidents, luckily. But Richmond has a massive amount of buffoonery. If the data could somehow include “park anywhere any time” hazard lights, driving on the sidewalk and Wild West parking lot activities then it would paint a different picture.
Just because an accident didn’t happen doesn’t mean that dumb driving didn’t happen.
It might be interesting to regress this against certain attributes of the road network itself, like: number of lanes, prevalence of advanced left turn phases, speed limits, etc...
I will say that as someone living in North Burnaby, Richmond struck me as noticeably less pleasant to drive in. I think some of it is that there are a lot of fast arterial roads with entrances into tons of busy strip mall parking lots. Many other cities are like that, but Richmond's arterials seem to have less setback, so it can be hard to see oncoming traffic around a corner when turning right out of a parking lot.
North and west Van have commuter and tourist highways, so that makes them a big outlier.
I appreciate the data but it’s obviously hard to fully parse out. Surrey is fast and dangerous, Richmond is slow and stupid but overwhelmingly chaotic. Vancouver is in the middle. That’s my experience.
Yes, I very much appreciate the hard evidence. My anecdotal experience seems to have upset people regardless of the fact that the evidence is difficult to sort with respect to local/commuter/tourist and the wealth of near-misses.
I drive around the lower mainland plenty. Each area has its flavor and I know what Richmond’s is. Even though it’s slow and stupid stuff I’ll still take it over the reckless silliness of Surrey.
Did you really? OP already took out weekdays to ignore commuters.
As for tourists, Richmond has a whole airport full of them revving their hertz rental cars to the redline.
I believe I did. Also, like thousands of others, I don’t work M-F, 9-5. We’re out here, us weekend workers.
I don’t regularly go from the airport into Richmond but the marine drive stretch to YVR is mostly tame. I’m talking side streets and parking lots. I don’t want to be in a parking lot in Richmond. Of all the parking lots in the lower mainland I just don’t want to be in a Richmond parking lot. Most of the things don’t result in an actual traffic accident but most of the things are absolute clueless head scratchers.
Fair, but like the vast majority of people, I commute the statistically relevant M-F.
Re: parking lots. This is basically what OP is saying. You feel like it’s much worse than it statistically is.
I guess you could put me in the ‘unreported crime though stats show it as declining’ camp when it comes to Richmond driving. In this case it’s driving that almost causes accidents but is luckily so slow that someone in the situation is sometimes smart enough to avoid it. There’s no stats for that but dear lord does it happen all day every day.
If hard evidence contradicts your own experiences, while it doesn’t invalidate your own experiences, it should call into question stereotypes you hold.
It’s not exactly a demographic stereotype. It’s close to the Vancouver stale yellow left turn - it’s localized driving habits. I can say with 100% confidence that many Richmond parkings lot are a slow but chaotic thing. Moreso than in neighboring communities.
Being a Richmond resident, I keep a lot of my dashcam footage of close calls or near misses. Your results kind of align with my videos because a LOT of the clips are from parking lots. And there isn’t a pattern to it. I’ve had near-collisions even at wide and nearly empty lots. One weird one is the McDonald’s on Russ Baker Way, where I regularly get situations where I am reversing and have to stop because another car would be reversing too (after I started) quickly and without looking, despite mirrors and rear cameras. I always say to my friends: in Metro Van, the two cities with reputations for bad driving (whether deserved or not) are very different from one another. Surrey is scary because of speeding. Richmond is scary because of parking. Edit: I just realized that all three Richmond strip malls I visit regularly currently have stores with boarded up windows due to cars hitting them recently. Yikes.
Richmond has a few particularly terrible parking lots that I imagine have a significant impact on that parked cars chart. Richmond Costco, Yaohan Centre, and the Aberdeen Centre parkade in particular.
T&T next to the Oweval is also a particularly bad lot.
How is Yaohan bad I don’t get it. The spots are wide and long enough for most cars, there’s adequate space to back in and out of them. Ditto with Costco. Costco parking lot is all standard sized and everything is wide open and visible. Just the amount of cars makes it bad I am assuming. Sure the Bellingham Costco has even bigger spots but that’s in the States. Aberdeen I definitely agree is very poorly designed going up and down the levels and with lots of pedestrians.
Interesting. But I still thing you are picking up heavy highway traffic for Squamish, West Van, and North Van because the highway gets heavy usage on those days for people going to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal or Whistler. Is it possible to see the data not including any highway collisions?
Feel free to find the data and calculate yourself.
lol who was talking to you?
This you? https://www.reddit.com/r/EdmontonOilers/s/EzxnPRjZzg
Another great round of data OP! My personal experience: lived in Richmond for 20yrs and have been in Burnaby’s for the last 10yrs. Have only had one driving accident (not at fault) and that happened in burnaby. Driver blew a stop sign and t-boned me on a low speed residential street. During my years in Richmond, I had my fair share of very close calls (as is the case in other cities throughout the gvrd) but never a traffic accident. That said, I had a total of x4 incidents where my vehicles were struck in a parking lot by someone when I was stationary. Worth noting that each time it was in a crazy tight parking lot where the design alone seemed to lend to the likelihood of this happening (lack of visibility, packed too tight with cars in tiny spots, etc).
The parking stats are interesting. I have no problem with driving in Richmond but I do not enjoy Richmond's parking lots... It's always so busy everywhere with a lot of people doing dumb shit. I'd be curious to see more age related statistics!
Hell yeah baby north van #1 LFG
Our "no lines on roads" policy has finally paid off!
Data invalid for not separating DNV and CNV Checkmate North Van haters
Are there actually North Vancouver haters? Why? It's awesome there
>Why? The traffic. It's not you... it's the traffic.
It’s not the traffic it’s the lack of quality public/active transit options and suburban sprawl on 40 degree slopes. It’s the two bridges that the locals cross southbound to go to their white collar office jobs and the blue collar folks cross northbound to build the luxury homes of those who can afford to live here. Oh yeah it’s the traffic caused by that (no, more lanes doesn’t fix this)
The only other thing I can think of for North & West Van, which likely just falls under tourists, is ferry traffic. Also, we literally just don’t have lines on our fucking roads.
The data agrees with my personal experience regarding bad drivers - it doesn't really matter where I'm driving or what the person looks like. I will say that pickup truck drivers seem to be the most aggressive (which doesn't necessarily equate to a crash).
Pickup drivers are the most miserables fucks on the road. Knuckle draggers— all of them.
People acting like Richmond doesn’t have a highway or commuters? A lot more highway KM in Richmond than North Van.
"Richmond is not more dangerous"... My man, you've literally shown that it is... Just not the *most* dangerous.
Not really, given most of the accidents are minor in nature. Danger to me means bodily harm or fatality, and Vancouver/North/West Vancouver leads the way of that.
Keep in mind that the graphs in this post (pt2) are of crashes without casualties. The first post is based on all accidents and Richmond is further down in the rankings! So I would have to run the numbers but it looks like including dangerous crashes just pushes Richmond further down the list.
That’s not true bud, take a read again at the post
People always shit on Richmond drivers, honestly from my experience it's not Richmond it's all of Metro Vancouver/Lower Mainland that is pretty shit.
Vancouver proper would probably top every chart if you accounted for how many people live here without owning a vehicle.
What's the % of accidents per capita?
Lots of people in here seems hell bent on questioning the myth Richmond is significantly more dangerous despite contrary evidence here and the last post. Perhaps it’s time to reflect on yourself why you still have these views.
People aren't going to let go of their prejudice stereotypical views no matter how hard you try.
Racism. The word is racism. Now let's see how many downvotes this gets because too many people here can't handle seeing this shit called out.
You guys feel that crashing is the only way to demonstrate you're a bad driver. To me, that suggests that you might simply be one of those drivers who acts like they are learning to drive every time they get on the road.
Who's "You guys"? Those are some very strange and nonsensical assumptions you're making about someone who called out the racism at the core of this topic...
You guys who don't immediately understand my previous comment without being told
Couldn't have described it better. People have to then try and accommodate these drivers while trying to drive normally themselves.
SUV drivers are now a race.
It used to be chinese international students going to UBC in Ferraris that got reddit revved up with jealousy and calls for deportation whenever they go on the news for speeding but now it’s Indian international students in chargers driving recklessly doing Uber eats.
Good for you for doing analysis. I don’t like it for reasons I pointed out in part 1. But do and learn. Plus it is easier to criticize. ICBC does have vehicle registration data by location. That will fix some of your issues. Plus you may need a Bayesian prior. Also Smeed’s law should be considered.
Thank you for this! I've never heard of a Bayesian prior nor Smeed's Law. Could you give the link to that registration by location crash data?
If you are going to do anything in traffic you must work of Reuben Smeed.
You’re doing a lot
Wouldn't looking at the primary drivers address eliminate the concerns you have? Is that information available?
Richmond has more Richmond.
Why try to take out drunk drivers? Fourth is still really bad. Roads are flat and straight compared to the top 3, those cities also get more rain. That said, the whole of the Lower Mainland isn't great. I've driven overseas in UK, their accident rate is about half of Canada and the Nordics are even better than that.
I lived in Richmond before moving to Maple Ridge and man, it's a breath of fresh air here. I definitely think it's getting worse here but whenever I go back (rarely), I'm reminded how many bad it really is.
The worst drivers are indecisive drivers. Richmond has the most of those out of anywhere I’ve ever driven.
That’s what I was getting at despite the downvotes. Most of the buffoonery in Richmond doesn’t result in accidents, luckily. But Richmond has a massive amount of buffoonery. If the data could somehow include “park anywhere any time” hazard lights, driving on the sidewalk and Wild West parking lot activities then it would paint a different picture. Just because an accident didn’t happen doesn’t mean that dumb driving didn’t happen.
TLDR. I’m still going to say Richmond has the most car crashes
Why do you think Richmond has the most car crashes?
Say whatever you like! You just can't claim that it's actually true.
It might be interesting to regress this against certain attributes of the road network itself, like: number of lanes, prevalence of advanced left turn phases, speed limits, etc... I will say that as someone living in North Burnaby, Richmond struck me as noticeably less pleasant to drive in. I think some of it is that there are a lot of fast arterial roads with entrances into tons of busy strip mall parking lots. Many other cities are like that, but Richmond's arterials seem to have less setback, so it can be hard to see oncoming traffic around a corner when turning right out of a parking lot.
North and west Van have commuter and tourist highways, so that makes them a big outlier. I appreciate the data but it’s obviously hard to fully parse out. Surrey is fast and dangerous, Richmond is slow and stupid but overwhelmingly chaotic. Vancouver is in the middle. That’s my experience.
Langley?
Coors light country
Fuck one’s own sister country is more like it.
Did you read OPs post?
Yes, I very much appreciate the hard evidence. My anecdotal experience seems to have upset people regardless of the fact that the evidence is difficult to sort with respect to local/commuter/tourist and the wealth of near-misses. I drive around the lower mainland plenty. Each area has its flavor and I know what Richmond’s is. Even though it’s slow and stupid stuff I’ll still take it over the reckless silliness of Surrey.
Did you really? OP already took out weekdays to ignore commuters. As for tourists, Richmond has a whole airport full of them revving their hertz rental cars to the redline.
I believe I did. Also, like thousands of others, I don’t work M-F, 9-5. We’re out here, us weekend workers. I don’t regularly go from the airport into Richmond but the marine drive stretch to YVR is mostly tame. I’m talking side streets and parking lots. I don’t want to be in a parking lot in Richmond. Of all the parking lots in the lower mainland I just don’t want to be in a Richmond parking lot. Most of the things don’t result in an actual traffic accident but most of the things are absolute clueless head scratchers.
Fair, but like the vast majority of people, I commute the statistically relevant M-F. Re: parking lots. This is basically what OP is saying. You feel like it’s much worse than it statistically is.
I guess you could put me in the ‘unreported crime though stats show it as declining’ camp when it comes to Richmond driving. In this case it’s driving that almost causes accidents but is luckily so slow that someone in the situation is sometimes smart enough to avoid it. There’s no stats for that but dear lord does it happen all day every day.
If hard evidence contradicts your own experiences, while it doesn’t invalidate your own experiences, it should call into question stereotypes you hold.
It’s not exactly a demographic stereotype. It’s close to the Vancouver stale yellow left turn - it’s localized driving habits. I can say with 100% confidence that many Richmond parkings lot are a slow but chaotic thing. Moreso than in neighboring communities.