Information related to school zones, school buses and playground zones.
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!
Every year in Canada, drivers kill 16 child pedestrians and 5 child cyclists. They also injure 1,300 and 700 respectively. Sadly most of these incidents are preventable and we can do things to make it safer for children to walk or ride a bicycle in our community.
It's back to school time for students at Frank J. Ney Elementary School in Nanaimo and Nanaimo News Now is reporting conflicts between residents on Entwhisle Drive and Carriage Drive and the parents driving their children to the school. The residents do not want the parents to use "their" street to deliver children to school.
The addition of a five-foot stop sign arm installed on one of Mineral County, West Virginia's school buses is proving to be helping to keep children safer, school officials said. John Droppleman of the school system’s transportation department told the Board of Education on Tuesday that the extended arm was installed on bus No. 57.