Are you Ready to put Down the Phone? BC Legislates a Cell Phone Ban

“Hey, what are you doing? Do you want me to call you back?” “No, its no big deal, I am just driving.”

This describes the busy lives of so many of us. What makes us think we will not be one of the careless drivers? Is it human nature to take risks? How about the lives of families who have changed in that one moment when a serious car crash has injured or killed a loved one? Was it really important to make dinner reservations while driving? It should be common sense not to take these kind of risks.

These actions are conducted everyday, by thousands of drivers. Reflect on the research:

• On average, about 117 people die each year in British Columbia and approximately 1400 are sent to the hospital because of driver distraction.
• Drivers who text spend 400 per cent more time with their eyes off the road than a normal motorist.
• People who talk on a phone while driving are four times more likely to crash.

But in our society it takes legislation to make people personally responsible for their actions and the safety of others.

On January 1, 2010 BC motorists will be legislated to put down the phone, the blackberry, portable games and MP3 players. Adult drivers will still have the privilege of using “hands-free” devices, such as earpieces and speakerphones. To dial a number you must use verbal or one-touch dialing. New drivers, however, will be banned from using phones or sending messages, even with a hands-free device.

Drivers caught texting or e-mailing will be fined $167.00 after February 1, 2010 and have three penalty points added to their licences. New drivers who violate any part of the rules will receive three points. To continue driving, people who accumulate more than three points must pay a penalty points premium to ICBC.

This is a good time to take a stock of your driving habits. What else do you do that is distracting? It can be the simple things like referring your kids argument, eating a sandwich, spilling your hot coffee, applying lipstick, or worse reading or checking your computer. Take on your own responsibility for your actions. Become an engaged defensive driver. Be safe, arrive alive.

If you or someone you know has been injured due to the carelessness of others while operating a motor vehicle, call Klein Lyons for a free consultation on your rights to compensation.

Why Did They Destroy the EV-1?

Once upon a time, there was a little engine that could. A car engine, that is, that could run on electricity. The EV-1 electric car worked so well. Indeed, no gasoline was needed for these wheels and they ran just like a charm.

But then, one day in 2006, all the electrical engines were called home by their creator General Motors and one by one, each was squashed into oblivion. And to this day, nobody really knows why.

The saga of this doomed electrical engine is the subject of a documentary film made by Chris Paine called, appropriately, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” We might never know the answer.

You can see the news report on the documentary or watch the full movie narrated by Martin Sheen.

The company which set out to destroy its own creation has explained that people simply weren’t interested in buying these cars. The market just wasn’t there. So, naturally, they had to destroy them all. Makes sense … doesn’t it?

Theories abound about why this really happened. “It was Big Oil, threatened by such a great new product.” “It was the Republicans.” “It was the Saudis.” “It was the World Bank.”

“No, it was the American consumer. They could not accept the limits on their freedom dictated by having to plug in their cars every night. All their fault!” The bottom line is that we are left with a fascinating mystery on our hands.

Filmmaker/Director Chris Paine was told that the cars were being “recycled” – then he got some helicopter footage of the cars being destroyed. This prompted him to make the documentary. The Associated Press gave this film 3 out of 4 stars but it got zero media attention – which is why you’ve never heard of it. Drivers pooled their resources and offered the company $1.9 million to buy back the cars. No dice. Actor Peter Horton (“Thirtysomething”) was the last Californian to have his electric car taken away in 2006, but even that didn’t make the evening news. Director Michael Moore co-hosted one of the first screenings of the film, making it even more amazing that you’ve never heard of this before now.

But since that happened in 2006, the electric car is finally making a comeback. Check out our future blogs on electric cars to see more exciting innovation in the electric and hybrid cars.

What, When & How Your Social Media Can be Used in a Court of Law

Careful what you put on your Facebook pages – your boss might be reading! Remember those party pictures? How about that time you were “in drag” for Halloween? And should you really leave those rude comments up by your former college buddy on your wall?

Let’s face it – we’ve all made mistakes online. Luckily though, that’s pretty easy to fix.

Or is it?

Deleting something does not make it go away forever. The data can still be retrieved and or analyzed, your activities can be tracked by anybody with expertise who examines your computer. Even logging into your Facebook pages can be tracked.

Now, why would such a thing ever happen? You’d be surprised.

If you sue somebody for injuries, you may have to hand over your family’s computer. Sound crazy? It’s not. On March 5, 2009, a judge in Cranbrook, BC ordered a person who’d suffered a brain injury in a car accident, to turn over the family PC’s hard drive.

The reason? The defence wanted to see how much time the plaintiff spent online between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. each night. This case raises a lot of interesting issues. When you start a lawsuit, have you completely given up your right to privacy? The reported legal cases have been struggling with this issue for a long time. The internet has now added a brand new dimension to this question. Is everything you do online subject to scrutiny? Based on this latest court decision, it looks like the answer to that is “yes”.

During any lawsuit, all parties must reveal their evidence before trial. The lawyers often grapple before trial with the issue of which documents are relevant. A party can’t be forced to produce thousands of pages which only “might” be relevant (too much time and expense), and neither can they be forced to break a confidential relationship or disclose highly embarrassing, personal information

In this case, which is fast becoming known in the legal world as “The Facebook decision”, the defendant asked the court to allow them to retrieve records of when the plaintiff logged into and out of Facebook each night. He has claimed that he can’t work due to fatigue.

The defendant argued that examining the Facebook login/logout records may yield evidence of the plaintiff’s sleeping patterns and this information, they said, would relate to his fatigue and his ability to work. Arguably, if he is contributing to his own fatigue by staying up all night on Facebook, then the defendant could rely on this information to deny or reduce the claim.

The courts have been asked to decide on this issue before. In one case, the judge held that “the request for private emails and internet searches was held to be a fishing expedition and, as the groundwork was not laid down to show that there were fish worth catching, was dismissed.”

This was a very important decision, since it gives us a hint of how the courts will deal with the relatively new world of cyberspace. So beware – your every move on the internet might actually turn out to be evidence in court one day.