RHD ban

[Errol.]

http://speedhunters.com/archive/2010...-vehicles.aspx

Well apparently they are now in Quebec
Anyone have anyother info on this?

Good or bad idea?
Rest of Canada will follow?

[BaggedGLI]

Re: RHD ban

Bout time, Canadian roads are not made for rhd.

[J-hop]

Re: RHD ban

I personally think it is a good idea for daily driver cars, specialty cars and ones you only drive to shows should be handled a little different.

A few safety concerns I see, one is that you can't (no matter what anyone claims) see properly while making left turns at intersections heck half the time you can't see with a LHD drive car! Also passing on the highway is dangerous, i think it was two years ago a family died just outside of calgary when a skyline or 240 pulled out to pass and couldn't see their car and hit them dead on.

I do however feel that the vast majority of people that imported japanese imports gave the RHD car scene a bad rep. If you think of the mentality, most of the people importing RHD cars from japan do it because you get a fast car for cheap, it is nearly impossible to drive around on summer nights and not see someone ripping around in their ghetto box gts-t (no offense but i'd say 80+% of the gts-ts on the calgary streets are complete garbage).

I think it is really to bad that the RHD cars got a bad rep as there are still a lot of people that import them because they grew up with the cars or they wanted something different or they are just better cars etc, but I don't think this represents the majority of the RHD scene and the simple undeniable facts of lack of vision due to the construction of our roads for vehicles with a certain driver position lead to the logical conclusion of banning them to hopefully increase safety (I mean they can't decrease safety by banning RHD cars!).

[stefan]

Re: RHD ban

if its registered as a collector, than sure. Not a big fan otherwise. A lady from back home got in an accident passing someone in one and swore it saved her life because it was head on and the left side got hit hardest. Kinda thought that was pretty dumb, since if she had been on the left side to start with, she would never had pulled out to pass.

[cam_wmh]

Re: RHD ban

I think this is fu[king awesome!
And those proper japanese fanboys, should be delighted, as their LHD cars will retain their value better.

[Kor]

Re: RHD ban

Never should have been allowed here. Just isn't safe and many of the imported cars are obviously junk and shouldn't even pass safety-inspections.

Not saying there aren't some collectors with safe, nice, RHD show cars. But by and large the best thing is to stop the general public and allow it for show cars etc.

[Canadian Turbo]

Re: RHD ban

I am a bit more mixed on the subject, I personally think it should be related to the driver/owner of the vehicle. My problem is you have a lot of people in their late teens driving these cars and when you are not the most experienced driver should you really be driving a RHD car here. However someone with a lot more experience maybe able to drive the car just fine, but there are always visibility issues especially on left turns, and hard enough to see past some of the massive vehicles here as it is.

[CanadianCoupe]

Re: RHD ban

Banning them to me is a completely over the top reaction. I'm sure they have other statistics to show which types of vehicles or gender/age of drivers are involved in the most accidents but they don't ban those. Why not increase insurance premiums to make them prohibitly expensive for young inexperienced drivers in the same way a high performance car should be out of reach for a new driver.

In the UK we drive on the LHS and in the rest of Europe on the RHS. When we travel between countries we don't leave our cars behind and pick up a RHD or LHD car at the border. You don't attempt the journey if you are inexperienced as there are enough other things to think about other than what side of the road you should be on.

Driving a RHD car here has two main problems, you can't see to overtake and you can't see to turn left at a 2 lane junction. The first one you don't gamble, you use car positioning and road direction to see if it's safe without needing to venture onto the wrong side of the road to see if anything is coming. For the turning left it's only a problem if traffic coming the opposite way is also trying to turn their left and it is a two lane road such that there is also an inside lane that can go straight ahead whist traffic is queued to turn left. If there is you have to sit and wait to make sure nothing is coming. Can be annoying for people behind but I'm driving my car not them.

I wait at 17th Avenue and 4th Street SW for my bus home. I often see LHD cars turn North from 17th Ave without a care if anything is coming East on 17th Ave. They seem to think it's their right to turn and if anything is coming it's for them to slow down/stop to avoid an accident.

I've thought of a third problem - toll booths/barriers. It once took me three attempts to get into the car park at Calgary airport! By the time I'd pressed the button run around to the other side of the car and started to move forward the barrier was already on it's way down.

John

[Snowcatxx87]

Re: RHD ban

The argument that left hand turns are only a problem when other cars are turning in the opposite direction is flawed.

You should be able to see all the time, and I never have a problem seeing.

I support this ban.+1. They are simply not designed to be here.

[danosaur]

Re: RHD ban

I really don't see that many problems with rhd, as long as you aren't stupid and you are more cautious in the situations where visibility is impaired. There is a bunch of cool cars that are expensive and hard to find in lhd, that have less expensive and faster jdm counterparts available for import, why not?

[James]

Re: RHD ban

I really don't see that many problems with rhd, as long as you aren't stupid and you are more cautious in the situations where visibility is impaired.

This is the problem. 90% of the RHD cars on our roads are rusted, beat to **** skylines and whatnot that kids (16-20) are bringing in and driving like assholes. If it were just collectors having RHD cars here, I doubt theyd even be having this debate

[R_Ethug]

Re: RHD ban

^^ true true

[danosaur]

Re: RHD ban

This is the problem. 90% of the RHD cars on our roads are rusted, beat to **** skylines and whatnot that kids (16-20) are bringing in and driving like assholes. If it were just collectors having RHD cars here, I doubt theyd even be having this debate

While I agree with your skyline and kids statement, I don't agree with just collectors having them.

I'm 19, and i'd like to think i'm not stupid like the above mentioned. I see nothing wrong with me importing a nice example of a rhd car, doesn't have to be a collectors item.

[Kor]

Re: RHD ban

The "in the Uk..." argument just doesn't fly. This isn't about theory it's about reality. In reality 90% of these vehicles are unsafe, poor condition, and driven by inexperienced drivers.

Sure they could do something like a special test (like motorcycles) but who pays for that? Taxpayers?

I think cranking up the insurance would be OK too but that is unlikely to happen after the government reformed insurance and set caps on how much young people can be charged just a few years ago.

Other option is to tighten up safety inspections but again this is probably costly to enforce. Banning is just cheaper.

[bitskyline]

Re: RHD ban

I had a toyota soarer for a year and i'm not going to lie i bought it because it was cheap and had power. it took me about a week for it to feel normal to drive on the right. kinda like switching hands when your jerkin it.

i am against them myself now that i owned one... as a collector vehicle yes of course but just not a good vehicle to daily drive its really difficult to see but i did like not having the a-pillar to the left, it gave me a better view across traffic. still though it wasn't practical. oh and mcdonalds doesn't like it when you back-thru rather then drive-thru hehe.