B.C. drivers still failing to buckle up, leave phones alone as RCMP write thousands of tickets in March

Police in British Columbia say people still don’t appear to be getting the message to buckle up and to leave electronic devices alone while they’re behind the wheel, as more than 3,000 tickets were issued to drivers in March.

BC Highway Patrol officers issued 1,008 tickets to people caught using their devices while driving in Central B.C., which includes Merritt, Kamloops, Clearwater and Kelowna. The region also led in the total number of tickets issued to people who did not buckle up last month, and police say it remains a problem.

“There is something about people who maybe like to live in those wide open spaces where they don’t like to put on seatbelts, but none of your car safety functions are going to operate if you don’t take that easy step of putting on your seatbelt,” BC Highway patrol spokesperson Cpl. Michael McLaughlin said.

“As for distracted driving, for whatever reason Central B.C. seems to lead the way in people who think they can drive while distracted, but they’re not alone. This is a common problem we see in drivers who believe that maybe the rules are for other people and not for them. That is not true.”

In total, police wrote 3,497 tickets during this year’s Occupant Restraint and Distracted Driving campaign across the province, with 2,722 of those being electronic device tickets. It’s a slight decline from the 3,559 tickets that police issued in March 2025.

“When you consider staffing changes, different enforcement techniques, weather and other factors, these numbers are essentially flat,” McLaughlin added.

With the busy summer travel season approaching, McLaughlin says police will continue with their education and enforcement efforts across the province, hoping that one day people will finally get the message.

“Distracted driving is still one of the top three things that can kill you on B.C. roads, along with speed and impairment, and seatbelts are just such an easy way to save lives in collisions,” he said.

“We are actually ticketing the people who are the most egregious offenders – people who are actually talking and texting on their phones. We tend to go after the worst offenders so it is a real problem in central B.C. and we’d like to see that trend reverse.”