Think of him as North Vancouver’s David Attenborough – but for traffic violations.
On Aug. 1, retiree Ian Batchelor posted up with a coffee and a camera outside the End of the Line General Store to capture dozens of drivers treating the stop signs at Lynn Valley Road and Dempsey Road as mere suggestions.
“I do have a YouTube channel, so I thought hey, I don’t have a very big following, but what the hell,” he said. “We just sat having coffee, and the camera did all the work.”
Over the course of 45 minutes, Batchelor’s camera captured about 41 drivers failing to stop at any of the three stop signs at the intersection – some of them repeat offenders.
With a bit of cheek, Batchelor offers commentary throughout the eight-minute film.
“It’s where the locals come and watch the world go by and, more often than not, the world goes completely through the stop sign without even stopping, even professional drivers,” he says.
More than a novel way of recording an urban annoyance, Batchelor said he wanted his video to remind people that a rolling stop, ubiquitous as they are, could have dire consequences for more vulnerable road users.
“If you lived at that intersection or anywhere near it and your kids were going to school, you’d be upset with the number of people that blow through that stop sign,” he said. “Some people say I’m being a Karen. ‘You’re just being whiny.’ Well, if you’ve been hit in an intersection…”
Batchelor said he’d like to see the RCMP send a message and come nab some of the low-hanging fruit.
“I’d just like to see the police, every once in a while, do the little stuff, right? I know they have crime to deal with, but just having a presence at that intersection once a day would probably slow people down,” he said.
At $167 a pop for failing to obey a stop sign, enforcement would bring it about $8,500 per hour in traffic fine revenues, assuming Batchelor’s video wasn’t capturing an anomaly.
North Vancouver RCMP spokesperson Const. Mansoor Sahak said the police typically use their limited traffic enforcement resources at locations known to have a high number of collisions, where they are also looking out for speeding, distracted driving and other dangerous behaviour.
According to ICBC, there were eight reported crashes at the corner of Dempsey and Lynn Valley Road between 2019 and 2023.
“We can’t be everywhere all the time, right? There are just so many intersections across North Vancouver,” Sahak said. “We obviously rely on the public to do the right thing, to follow the rules. And you never know when we might be at an intersection, enforcing the stop sign, so you are risking getting a ticket.”
And Sahak stressed, there shouldn’t be any need for interpretation of what the octagonal red sign means.
“It’s not a rolling stop. It’s not slowing down, looking and just continue going. It’s not a yield sign. It means a complete, full stop behind the white line,” he said. “You’re putting the public in danger if you’re not coming to a complete stop. There’s a reason why a stop sign exists.”
