Image Credit: CFJC Today / Jill Sperling

By Jill Sperling

PEDESTRIAN SAFETY

City, public safety professionals take actions to improve pedestrian safety

Dec 10, 2019 | 8:27 AM

KAMLOOPS — The City of Kamloops and Kamloops RCMP are launching a safety campaign in response to a recent increase in collisions between vehicles and pedestrians.

“This has really come to the forefront with all the vehicular accidents and pedestrian accidents that have happened,” said Cpl. Jodi Shelkie of the Kamloops RCMP. “It’s something we always address, but we’re really putting in a concerted effort right now.”

Kamloops Fire Rescue, city bylaw officers and Speed Watch joined RCMP this morning (Dec. 10) to hand out reflectors outside the Tournament Capital Centre.

They also recorded the speed of vehicles in the parking lot.

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The goal is to get both pedestrians and drivers to think about their actions.

“Parents coming out of the TCC for example, the first thing they do when they get out of the gym or the pool is they check their Facebook, their Instagram,” said KFR Assistant Fire Chief Robb Schoular. “They’re on their phones, not paying attention possibly, to what their children are doing, darting out into traffic, between parked cars, things like that.”

Parking lots are not the only concern. A pedestrian was seriously injured while in a crosswalk in Aberdeen on Dec. 5.

In November, an employee of Thompson Rivers University was killed in an intersection on McGill Road.

The City of Kamloops is now looking to create a strategy to address safety concerns along the McGill corridor and other areas.

“Another thing worth mentioning is that we do have a supplemental item that we plan to bring forward to council for updating crosswalks since the standards changed in 2018,” said the City’s Development and Engineering Services Director Marvin Kwiatkowski. “We have 36 crosswalks that we’ve identified for upgrading.”

Lighting is also a consideration, as many of these collisions are happening when it gets dark.

“Between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. is when most of the pedestrian and vehicle accidents happen,” Shelkie said, “and that’s the time it’s starting to get dark now, at 4:00 p.m., and there’s more people on the streets walking home from work and after their day at school, or wherever they may be.”

For drivers, it’s important not to get complacent and to be continually scanning for pedestrians waiting to cross the street.

Harold Meier of Dallas Driving School tries to instill this habit in his students.

“Just getting them to look around more, teaching them to scan,” Meier said. “The other thing is we do a running commentary where they’re talking about what they’re doing and they start listening to themselves and then they start to realize, ‘Oh, I’m missing these things,’ and that’s very helpful.”

Meier says some drivers begin to take shortcuts after having their driver’s license for a while.

“Once they’ve been driving for a while, that complacency starts setting in and they realize ‘maybe I don’t have to do the shoulder checks,'” he said.

The safety campaign launched by the City and RCMP aims to end that complacency and help both drivers and pedestrians form better habits.