Downtown Vancouver leads the province in the number of distracted driving charges (interactive map)

VANCOUVER – Drivers in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland are the biggest offenders in the entire province when it comes distracted driving.

Data released to Global News by ICBC shows distracted driving charges have a strong geographic pattern, with two downtown Vancouver neighbourhoods on a top 4 list of BC’s 187 postal codes.

Downtown’s V6C, with 1,649 licenced drivers, topped the list of postal codes with the highest number of distracted driving charges, with 61 charges in the first 17 months of the law taking effect, or about 37 per 1,000 licenced drivers.

V4S, near Mission, and V3V in northwest Surrey also have high rates, at 33.5 and 31.3 charges per 1,000 licenced drivers respectively.

Here are BC’s top 10 postal codes for distracted driving:

1) V6C Downtown Vancouver

2) V4S Northwest Mission

3) V3V Northwest Surrey

4) V6B Downtown Vancouver

5) V7S Northern West Vancouver, British Properties

6) V2V Mission

7) V3T Northwest Surrey

8) V4X Abbotsford

9) V3X Lower west Surrey

10) V4W Aldergrove

The Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General was not able to come up with a possible explanation for the geographic distribution of distracted driving charges.

But Allan Lamb, President and CEO of the BCAA Road Safety Foundation and a former police officer, says it could be as simple as the degree and nature of police enforcement in some areas of BC versus others.

“There are pockets of our province where there are ‘really keen’ police officers who enforce everything from seat belts to speeding to distracted driving, and there are other pockets where it is just not something where there is a whole lot of enforcement taking place,” says Lamb.

He says police officers in Kamloops, which has a high rate of speed related crashes, are more likely to enforce speed laws. By the same analogy, officers up in Prince George and Kelowna, where there is a high percentage of impaired driving related crashes, will be assigned to get out there and track down impaired drivers.

“Sometimes it is a matter of police officers being deployed to address certain issues,” says Lamb.

He says the volume of vehicles also makes it easy for police officers to enforce things like seat belts and distracted driving.

“All they have to do is stand on an onramp, and you’ve got yourself 500 vehicles going through in an hour.”

Lamb says unlike the number of crashes, charges can be quite subjective, and do not necessarily reflect how distracted driving affects road safety.

Over 53,000 charges have been laid against BC drivers under the province’s distracted driving laws, a year and a half after they took effect.

Under the Motor Vehicle Act, a driver can be charged with “distracted driving” if he or she is using a hand-held electronic device that has a phone function and can send and receive email and other text-based messages.

Talking, operating and even just holding an electronic device while driving can get you in trouble.

Cpl. Annie Linteau with “E” Division RCMP says if drivers feel they must make a phone call or operate a hand held device they should pull over at a safe location.

“No phone call, as important as it may seem at the time, is worth getting into an accident or worse being killed or getting someone else killed,” says Linteau.

Heading into the BC Long weekend, the RCMP say they will step up traffic enforcement on all major highways and in all RCMP-policed communities.