I saw a lady almost die this morning.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

I have only driven in Canada one time (Michigan to Toronto) and the number of drivers who just pulled out in front of me at the last minute was astounding.

Is this a Canadian thing? In the US, we usually try to merge/turn and accelerate so as to not require the traffic coming up from behind to slow in the least.

There's a lot of drivers in Canada who have been Canadian for about twenty minutes. Vancouver was full of drivers who'd exclusively driven around Shanghai before moving here. The things they did in traffic were truly mind-boggling.

No idea what the problem with Toronto is about...they're about three times further away from me than Chicago is from Abilene.

[JAD]

There's a lot of drivers in Canada who have been Canadian for about twenty minutes. Vancouver was full of drivers who'd exclusively driven around Shanghai before moving here. The things they did in traffic were truly mind-boggling.

No idea what the problem with Toronto is about...they're about three times further away from me than Chicago is from Abilene.

My experience with BC matches that testimony. It’s like Nanjing with good coffee.

[DC_P]

I was tempted to get her attention at the next light and tell her she should pray thanks to the Lord, but she was far ahead and gone.

I am glad you never got the chance to tell her that looking at her phone while driving did something beneficial

[Stephanie B]

A few years ago, I came up to a four-way. There was a car approaching from the right, which seemed to be coming at a rather high rate of speed. In a 30MPH zone, the driver blew through the intersection at about 50mph or so, with musical accompaniment from the horn of my car, which I began blowing when the other car was almost on the intersection.

On the other hand, I damn near got hit at a three-way when I pulled out one morning. it was a road that I took every day to work and every day, for years, there never was another vehicle coming. I was sure that I looked, but I probably saw what I expected to see instead of what was there.

[Half Moon]

Worst I've had happen was in Portland. I'm was on a small 35 mph side street, stopped at a red light, where it intersects a major road. Heavy traffic flowing across the intersection. In my rear view I see a pick up approaching at probably 70 mph and it ain't slowing down. I've got nowhere to go. The pick up driver finally wakes up, smokes all four tires, and ends up stopped inches from my bumper. And they start honking their horn, shouting, and flipping ME off. Which trust me if I'd had anywhere to go I'd have got out of their way post haste when I saw them approach at ramming speed...

[Darth_Uno]

My dad always said don't trust red lights, and don't trust blinkers. Years before I was born he hit and almost killed a kid on a motorcycle who ran a red light (Dad was in a Silverado dually).

My previous 4runner was totaled when a lady went straight through a turn lane.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

My experience with BC matches that testimony. It’s like Nanjing with good coffee.

It's surreal and you're supposed to pretend it's not happening on account of how noticing it is racist. But the reality is pretty simple: there's no racial component to being a skilled driver, as far as I know...but how anyone could possibly expect people from a place with essentially no standardized driving rules to come here and conform to our largely unwritten ruleset, I have no idea. So of course that doesn't happen. But the stuff you see in Vancouver is wild. I have personally witnessed the following:

A brand new S600 slowly (like half of walking speed) driven halfway into an intersection where all traffic was stopped for an ambulance, blocking the ambulance, which was leaning on the stinger trying to get them to move...the S600, which had a completely empty spot behind it, eventually moved forward about another ten feet, then stopped. The ambulance kept hitting the stinger in an attempt to get the mercedes a little further forward so they could move behind it easily, but gave up and began to try to maneuver around behind it. That was the exact amount of time needed for the driver to find reverse, which they rammed it into at last, and stomped on the gas, plowing into the ambulance. I watched it all, the blank confusion of the driver staring at the stopped ambulance, the ten seconds to figure out reverse while staring at the dash, the max application of gas with no check to see what was back there...just nuts.

A brand new A8 driving down a two-lane (like one each way) road which went in front of a mall, stopping. The driver and passengers got out, and went into the mall. Vehicles behind honked frantically, which was clearly unnerving to the driver who hastened away awkwardly with the kids.

A brand new Maserati of some kind, I don't know the models, driven at walking pace into a parking lot where it was carefully placed, also at walking speed, across about five parking spots, before the driver stomped on the gas and crashed it into about a dozen parked cars and eventually a traditional chinese medicine shop.

A Porsche Panamera backed out of a parking lot space, over a foot-high curb and into cross-traffic where it hit several vehicles and stopped after hitting a heavy concrete garbage can on the far side of the road, then driving away like nothing had happened.

I could go on like this for fifty pages. Six figure cars, often with four figure horsepower, driven by extremely wealthy people, mostly from Shanghai, who have no experience driving and do stuff that only someone who is used to being very powerful and basically immune to prosecution, but who is literally driving for the first time, as a forty or fifty year old. Or, if they've driven before, it was in Shanghai, but chances are there, they had a driver and rode in the back of a Maybach.

It's absolutely insane. Vancouver is the luxury car capital of North America, and that's who the buyers are, so you see these ferrarris and lamborghinis and stuff all the time, but they're driven by people who this could be the first car they've ever driven. Or by kids, often you see teenage kids with Audi R8s and Huracans and all kinds of insanity. The traffic consequences are utterly bananas.

But if you notice, that's racist, so everybody pretends that nothing is wrong.

[Joe in PNG]

I could go on like this for fifty pages. Six figure cars, often with four figure horsepower, driven by extremely wealthy people, mostly from Shanghai, who have no experience driving and do stuff that only someone who is used to being very powerful and basically immune to prosecution, but who is literally driving for the first time, as a forty or fifty year old. Or, if they've driven before, it was in Shanghai, but chances are there, they had a driver and rode in the back of a Maybach.

It's absolutely insane. Vancouver is the luxury car capital of North America, and that's who the buyers are, so you see these ferrarris and lamborghinis and stuff all the time, but they're driven by people who this could be the first car they've ever driven. Or by kids, often you see teenage kids with Audi R8s and Huracans and all kinds of insanity. The traffic consequences are utterly bananas.

But if you notice, that's racist, so everybody pretends that nothing is wrong.

People suddenly in the money buying the biggest, baddest, fastest car they can get, then immediately wrecking it is not a new thing. A lot of Shelby's 427 Cobras returned to the factory wrecked on trailers (Bill Cosby's 200MPH routine comes to mind), and how many retirees who used to ride in the 60's become organ doners because they thought a big Harley was the way to get back into motorcycles after 50 years of not riding.

But add someone who's not ever really driven before? Man, that's scary.

[Borderland]

I know a guy who bought a 1200 Sporty and had never had a motorcycle. He took a demo out for a trial ride and dropped it. Dealer wasn't too happy. He said no problem, I'll make it right when I buy it.

A friend who was with him told me the story. He felt bad because he talked the guy into buying a Harley.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

People suddenly in the money buying the biggest, baddest, fastest car they can get, then immediately wrecking it is not a new thing. A lot of Shelby's 427 Cobras returned to the factory wrecked on trailers (Bill Cosby's 200MPH routine comes to mind), and how many retirees who used to ride in the 60's become organ doners because they thought a big Harley was the way to get back into motorcycles after 50 years of not riding.

But add someone who's not ever really driven before? Man, that's scary.

Yeah, I can't honestly fault people for buying whatever they can afford. There's tons and tons of new China multimillionaires trying to get money out of that country and in Canada it's extremely easy to buy real estate, plus we offered money laundering on a massive scale, so naturally that happened. It's perfectly rational self-interested decision-making, which is exactly what I would do. So I don't blame people for coming, and buying, and doing.

But no question about it, the knock-on effects of opening that city to global money markets in a really overt way, killed a bunch of people and ruined uncountable numbers of lives. Traffic is insane as mentioned. Plus the social costs of unavailable housing...homelessness is completely out of control. A thousand people a year fatally overdose there now. If you weren't in the real estate market ten years ago in Vancouver, now it's basically "hope your parents own, and die." Locals are like local Haitians, living in a resort town for rich Americans. You can't really afford anything and the prices aren't connected to local wages at all so there's no brake on anything.

For perspective...

Seattle median household income is about $93,500/year.
Vancouver median household income in USD is about 57,600/year.

Average home price in Seattle is around $800,000.
Average home price in Vancouver is around $1,260,000.

That's what happens when you decouple a necessarily local market - housing - from local income. I left.