Southern Ontario Storms… Did we help?

If your ARES group,  SATERN group or local ham club played any part in the relief efforts of the storm that lambasted Southern and South Western (London, Sarnia) Ontario I would really like to know about it.

As you know the Ontario Goverment has not extended our exemption under Bill C118 and many other Provinces seem to take our services a bit more seriously as we have exemptions for amateur gear in about half the provinces from the various Driving while distracted leglisations.

One think I have noticed that the provinces that seem to like us the most are the ones who have used our services the most recently.  The Manitoba Floods, and the BC Fires are great examples of the service we provide not to our clients and partners but to our neighbors…

It seems other provinces never have emergencies or they have a short term memory…

So if we did something this past week please let me know so we can start to publicize it in our lobby attempts…

My email address is va3qv@rac.ca or just leave a comment on the end of this posting…

73bob

Driving while distracted from Local Media

LI got this from the Ottawa Sun (Sun Media) and thought I was worth sharing with you as we have been looking at this topic since the debate started…

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Cellphone driver ban on hold until later this fall

By SUN MEDIA

Last Updated: 30th September 2009, 2:48am

TORONTO — Don’t hang up that phone just yet.

Legislation banning the use of handheld electronics while driving is expected to come into effect this fall, but the province has not yet set a date.

Toronto Police Sgt. Tim Burrows said the force has been told the law could kick in between late October and late November.

When the new restrictions are in place, drivers who text, type, e-mail, dial or chat using a handheld device will face a fine of $60 to a maximum of $500 upon conviction. Hands-free devices will still be okay.

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Thanks again to the Ottawa Sun for this story

73bob

Bill C118 is a Popular topic today…

Well if I was to open up the blog so you could access all the stats (not going to happen) you would see that the topic of the day today is Ontario’s Bill C118.  That is the law that will look into the act of “Driving while Distracted”.

Even our own well known and very informative RAC Blog has been giving this topic alot of bandwidth recently.  VE3HG and VE3BDB both have had very good articles in the blog recently on what we could do as Ontario Amateurs, on what we could do as RAC Members and what RAC could do for us if the membership funds allowed it…

This in itself is a big issue which I will be addressing in a future series of posts but its only common sense that if we are going to have a National Body such as RAC to lobby on our behalf then we have to support them with our membership dues.  We have to give them the tools so they can do what we expect them to do….

But back to the present time for now…  I am expecting (predicting) that we will come away from bill C118 with little damage.  Most of its common sense anyway…  The intent of the Bill has always been to restrict those in the world who insist on being distracted by their wireless toys and the very worst of us who insist on reading emails and text messaging on the IPHONES, Blackberries and the like while driving.

Chatting on an amateur radio never really has been proven to be too distractive as long as the radio was properly mounted and not bouncing around on the seat beside you anyway…

Amateur Radios, CB Radios and Private Commercal Radios play a big part of the highway traffic and I just don’t see them banning all of that.  They always had the right to lay a careless driving charge and still will after this bill becomes enforced…

We should know shortly whats going on….

73bob