Call for drivers to slow down 365 days a year

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2016 (3488 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It seems there is nothing quite like the issue of speed limits in school zones to speed up the heart rates of drivers.

At least among those who feel a sense of injustice after getting a great big fine for going over 30 km/h when there were no kids in school on Thanksgiving or Labour Day Mondays.

Then there is the other side of the street.

That’s where Lisa Bakos-Prokopetz, a mother of three children stands on the issue. She happens to be an elementary school teacher and a supervisor of crosswalk guards and patrols at a St. Vital school.

She, and many more with varying views, wrote to me last weekend after my second column on the subject hit Saturday’s paper. A reader named Brian was among those many more.

“Love your stuff on the school zones,” he wrote. “Very therapeutic for me, who also got nailed!”

His encounter was on a sunny Labour Day, when police were obeying the letter of the law — if not its spirit — by ticketing motorists before the school year even started. Brian’s lapse — the reduced-speed 30 km/h school-zone signs read September through June, except Saturdays and Sundays — got him a $391 ticket.

As I reported Saturday, there are places in Canada — Vancouver for example — where the 30 km/h school zone limit doesn’t apply on school holidays. Problem is, that can get confusing; for instance when private schools observe different holidays.

Kevin Field is a 40-year-old father who raised another point.

“This is the first time I’ve ever written/emailed in on any article,” he began, suggesting how important the issue is to him. Kevin said he understands the frustration of people who were ticketed for speeding in school zones when classes weren’t in.

“Although school is technically closed during in-service days, many of them have daycares in them (including my son’s). Therefore, there are still little ones running around school yards.”

He added this: “We all live in a world today that seems to have the fast-forward button stuck on… we all need to slow down and realize what’s really important. Adding one to two minutes into your drive time to help keep our children safe isn’t going to kill us.”

Think about it this way, maybe.

Safe Kids Canada has reported that on average, 30 pedestrians younger than 14 years are killed and 2,412 are injured every year across the country.

In Manitoba, from 2011 to 2015, four child pedestrians were killed, while another 84 were injured on the province’s public roads. Manitoba Public Insurance, which supplied those numbers, didn’t have numbers on how many of those deaths and injuries happened in Winnipeg. Or in school zones.

There’s a way of dealing with all the safety concerns and all the confusion that I documented Saturday: adopt the Calgary solution.

Simply combine and blend school zones and playgrounds into child safety zones that operate every day of the year, from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Another reader, Scott Osinski, has been to Calgary and likes that.

“I spend a couple of months each year in Calgary,” he wrote. “I believe that their rules are the clearest and provide the maximum safety for children: 30 km/h in school and playground zones every day of the year basically during daylight hours. Easy to remember and react to. I rarely see anyone speeding in those zones.”

That brings us back to Bakos-Prokopetz, the mother of three and teacher I mentioned earlier, who also a supervises the school crossing guards at Victor Major School.

Her three kids — ages 8, 12 and 14 — attend Shamrock School though, where she says there are four patrols but no adults supervising at the three-way stop where her kids cross.

She’s another advocate of the Calgary solution.

“I live in Southdale on a school zone street,” she wrote, “and each day not only do I see people driving over the limit but I see impatient drivers driving around other cars, improper stopping and letting children off in the middle of the street.”

That’s not all she sees that concerns her.

“The summer months of July and August see more foot/bike/Rollerblading traffic from kids than the current 193 school days. We should, in fact, lobby to have 365 days, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. playground zones so that we can train Winnipeg drivers to be safe and cautious all of the time, not just Monday through Friday and excluding holidays. I don’t believe our city drivers could manage anything less.”

She added this: “Thanks for shedding light on an issue that has frustrated me for some time. I’ve written a letter to the editor letting the Winnipeg Police Service know if they need/want to fill their quota of traffic tickets, park by Shamrock School in the mornings and after school. Ten minutes and they will have their quota met.”

Later, when we spoke on the phone, she had a message for Mayor Brian Bowman, as one parent speaking to another. “Mayor Bowman, wake up. You’ve got children, too.”

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca