With the distracted driver legislation’s education period ending on the 1^st of February, the City of Thunder Bay’s Police Service is pleased to report that they only issued 8 tickets to violators, while the Ontario Provincial Police handed out seven tickets to drivers caught using their handhelds while on the road.

Thunder Bay Police traffic Sgt. Glenn Porter noted that the education period must have worked, seeing as how few violators have been caught. It’s a clear sign that some people do know better than to use their phones and other similar devices when driving, he said.

However, he also said that some people are still not complying with the law. In fact, Sgt. Porter himself stopped a man who was talking on his phone while waiting for the green light in an intersection. When he asked the drive to pull over, the man simply said that he thought the police were still giving away caution tickets. Sgt. Porter thinks that it’s only a matter of time before word spreads that police are actually laying down charges that will hurt anyone’s wallet.

Another problem Sgt. Porter observed was the high occurrence of speeding vehicles, especially on the stretch of road near Thunder Bay Mall. Police in the area have issued over 80 tickets for speeding.

Ever noticed how most, for sure not all, of our drivers act like they have all the time in the world to be able to stop for an officer of the police department or an ambulance? That’s probably one of the things many of us just ignore while on the road but for an insurance company like Allstate Insurance, this tells them a lot about our drivers who by the way had to drive on snow at least four months in any given year. In fact, according to the same insurance company, our drivers have placed 8^th out of 49 communities around Ontario.

How did the insurance company decide this ranking you might ask? Well, simply put, it means that Thunder Bay’s collision claims in any given year is only around 3.7 out of 100 vehicles. I know others might find it a little too good to be true that only 3.7% of us actually call our insurance companies to avail of our collision claims but keep in mind that this data is from an insurance company and if we follow logic, it should not be too hard to conclude that these companies have no plans of fooling themselves unless they want to get a shocking figure of claims right?

Either way, we should all be proud of our drivers for such an achievement especially given our weather condition.