Road safety at heart of campaign

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This article was published 23/05/2022 (1570 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Road safety was under the spotlight at Brandon City Hall last Thursday, as dignitaries representing various organizations gathered to discuss the issue.

It was the local launch for the 18th annual SAFE Roads campaign, which urges motorists to be careful during the summer construction season.

The theme of this year’s campaign is “Speeding will get you here faster.”

At first, that might seem counterproductive to the program’s goal, but the advertisements for the campaign clearly show that “here” refers to a courtroom and the consequences of speeding.

Leading the announcement was Don Hurst, director of WORKSAFELY, an organization that offers safety training and program certification for Manitoba’s heavy construction industry.

“Speeding has serious consequences when it occurs in the vicinity of workers, whether it’s construction or others,” Hurst said. “It can result in serious injuries to workers, to drivers, passengers and others. It can result in fines and suspensions for drivers. It has consequences for everybody.

“The point here is, when you speed, you’re not getting to where you’re going faster. You’re getting into a situation where you’re putting people into hazards faster.”

According to Hurst, an engineering student at the University of Manitoba recently calculated that slowing down by 10 kilometres an hour to meet the speed limit at a construction site or restricted zone means a driver will lose only 22 seconds per kilometre.

“If we don’t have 22 seconds to give to this, I don’t know what we have,” he said.

He was joined on the first floor of city hall by Mayor Rick Chrest, Sgt. Jeff Hoad of the Brandon Police Service, Brandon’s director of engineering, Mark Allard, and Dan Robertson, director of the Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba’s Brandon office.

Chrest said that motorists need to be aware that work can be happening not just along highways, but byways, municipal roads and rural roads. That work can take the form of construction, but it can also be law enforcement, paramedics, firefighters, utility workers and people building or working on pipelines.

“That includes pretty much all of us,” he said. “I think we ought to have in our mindset that if I needed to stop at the side of the road, it could be for something like attending to a child in the back seat. So when you’re stopped, you’re hopeful that the people coming by you will be mindful and provide that extra safety.”

With the warm weather coaxing people out of the house, the mayor said it adds to the number of cars on the road and elevates the need to be careful.

Speeding isn’t just driving faster than the posted speed limit, Hoad said, but driving too fast for the current road and traffic conditions as well.

“So many of these safety concerns and issues along our highways and roadways can be reduced or prevented by simply slowing down,” Hoad said. “Each one of us has a responsibility to ensure the roads are safe for everyone.”

Speed restrictions are in place to protect workers near roadways, no matter where they are in place, Allard added.

After the event, Hurst told the Sun he believed the SAFE Roads campaign has brought the issue of workplace road safety from something relatively obscure to something that 80 per cent of people surveyed every year say they’re aware of. However, he said there’s still a ways to go in getting the message out there.

The idea of driving as fast as conditions allow definitely comes into play in situations like this spring where frequent rain has left roads wet, he said.

“It’s about the condition of the road, it’s about your visibility. It’s about people who are working on the roads [and their] ability to see traffic coming. You need to drive to the conditions, not just to reduce your speed as per directions in a construction zone, but you need to … maybe even drive slower so you can see and you can be seen.”

» cslark@brandonsun.com

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