Information related to school zones, school buses and playground zones.
Question: Our daughter failed her road test due to not reducing her speed to 30 km/h as she drove through a playground zone. We don't understand this because there were no signs were present.
Today was the first day back at school for elementary students where I live. The school is on an arterial road with a posted speed of 60 km/h that is often ignored by many drivers. I stood with speed watch volunteers for an hour from 10:00 to 11:00 am and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.
Question: I've been living in the Armstrong Elementary school area for the last 1.5 years and I have never seen any speed enforcement taking place in the school zone on Rosedale Avenue or Pleasant Valley Road. It's beginning to feel like I'm the only one who knows the speed limit is 30 km/h. Is it as simple as calling the RCMP and requesting that they do enforcement here?
A playground zone in British Columbia is marked with a yellow diamond advisory sign. This tells drivers that they may find children present on the road and that they should use caution to avoid a crash. These signs are in effect from sunrise to sunset every day, all year around.
Two years ago I wrote about my experience that a significant part of the safety problem in a school zone was caused by teachers and parents themselves. Their driving behaviour as they showed up to work or dropped off their children sometimes left a lot to be desired. Did they not realize that they were contributing to the problem?
The City of Kamloops and School District 73 (Kamloops-Thompson) have teamed up to test a Safer School Streets pilot project at Arthur Hatton Elementary School. The project was timed to coincide with GoByBike week May 29 to June 9, 2023. It created a car free perimeter around the school during pick up and drop off times.
A visitor to this website remarked that the term "school days" in relation to school zone signs is becoming more and more ambiguous. The Motor Vehicle Act merely refers to "A person driving a vehicle on a regular school day" and I no longer know what a regular school day is, particularly since I don't have kids in school and when I am in an unfamiliar area of the province..
According to the Association of School Transportation Services of British Columbia, travel by school bus is statistically the safest method of ground transportation in Canada and by a substantial margin. We all expect and demand nothing less when our children and grandchildren are riding those buses to and from schools and school related events. Surely all drivers should understand this and not hesitate to stop when the red lights on a stopped bus are flashing.
We place a high value on our children and signify that with school and playground zones. Traffic is required to slow to the lowest speed limit that we normally post and drivers are expected to pay more attention than usual. Students must get to and from school safely.
School crossing guards take on a big responsibility when they are helping our children cross busy highways and intersections on their way to and from school each day. Traffic is in a hurry, the children don't always pay the attention that they should and sometimes the road conditions are poor or visibility is not good. It is not a job to be taken lightly!