Canadian Stupidity

We like to think of Canada as an advanced member of the 1st-world clique, but I'm sorry, at least once a day, every day, I just don't see it. Maybe it's because we're stressing so hard about the foleys of plagiarism that people just get indoctrinated into reinventing the wheel on every task. Consider the luge track. It's not a particularly complicated design and certainly not the first of its kind. It should, by all means, share many features, and many problems with other tracks previously created elsewhere.
Tracks where they very likely have encountered the same issues found and implemented solutions.

Here's a bright idea, Mr. Canadian Engineer, next time you're asked to design something that's been done before, go see how someone else did it, learn from their mistakes, adopt their strong features and come up with something better, not just new, better. Any replicated system that repeats the mistakes of its predecessors is a failure. All you needed to save that life was padding or a Plexiglas wall that would have had him sliding back onto the track rather than hitting a pole at 140 km/h.

One Georgian dies while beta testing Canadian design.

I can't imagine how many other needless accidents could be avoided with minor changes to our incredibly poorly designed traffic system by simply implementing what other countries have done with theirs.
Lose the 4-way-stops and the right to turn left wherever you want, replace them with roudabouts and dedicated left-turn signals in every intersection, and you should reduce traffic accidents by at least 60%.
But that's not the only issue. People here just don't know the rules. The written exam is ridiculously easy and the book is messy and rather than focus on the rules of the road it bullshits you about "Safe" driving, which usually means - don't drive while drunk. If you know the answer to the question "should i drive while drunk?" you can probably pass the written exam, it's that poorly designed.

I have lost count of the number of times I reached a 4-way intersection at the same time as another driverette on the opposite side. I want to turn left, she wants to continue going forward, but she stops and waits for me to turn left (essentially waiting for me to cut her off and take her right of way). If it happened once or twice I would say it's her fault for not knowing she has the right of way, but when it happens this often, then the system's to blame. When people don't know that traffic in the roundabout always has the right of way, then the system's to blame.

Canadians say "But that's the courtesy system. It promotes being polite." And that's a pile of crap. This is an ambiguous system that promotes deadlocks and congestion. If I do take her "courtesy" and cut her off, and she then decided to race into my car, by all legal means I am 100% to blame, if I wait for her, and she waits for me, none of us goes anywhere.

The UBC roundabout on 16th Ave. and Wesbrook Blvd. is another prime example of poor Canadian engineering. Same deal as the luge track: Simple design exists in countless working samples across the globe. One stupid Canadian engineer tasked with roundabout and gets it wrong at least 5 times, before finally settling for a semi-working highly-ambiguous model. They've actually had traffic accidents in that roundabout. How is that even possible? It's a roundabout! You can't speed in it even if you tried. That's like having a traffic accident in a mall escalator.

Maybe the education system should focus less on social justice and more on encouraging students to improve on their work, learn from their peers and always look for existing models before making their own.

It is quite embarrassing that the whole world has to see how incompetent we are, but it's inexcusable that someone has to die for us to see it. (And do we?)

O' Canada...