Road Safety Week focusing on dangerous D’s

by Truck News

KANATA, Ont. – Canada Road Safety Week is scheduled to run May 15-21, as the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police looks to draw attention to an array of safety-related issues.

It’s a campaign asking people to take the D’s — in the form of drunk, drugged, distracted, drowsy, dangerously, or detached – out of driving.

May 16 will include a special focus on alcohol-impaired driving, while the 17th will focus on fatigue-impaired driving. Distracted driving is the focus on the 18th, followed by drug-impaired driving and aggressive driving on the 19th and 20th, respectively. Occupant restraint use rounds out the issues of the week on May 21.

May 19 is also designated as National Enforcement Day.

The campaign is designed as part of the broader Canada’s Road Safety Strategy 2025, which looks to make Canada’s roads the safest in the world.

According to Canadian Motor Vehicle Traffic Collision Statistics, there were 1,898 motor vehicle fatalities in Canada in 2016, up 2% from 2015. The 10,322 recorded serious injuries were down 4% year over year. The 5.2 fatalities per 100,000 people, and 5.1 fatalities per billion vehicle kilometers traveled, remained unchanged.

In 2015, police reported 72,039 impaired driving incidents, representing a rate of 201 incidents per 100,000 people. This is the lowest rate since data on impaired driving was first collected in 1986 (-65%), and 4% lower than 2014.

Each year in Canada, about 2,000 people are killed and 165,000 are injured while using the road transportation system, annually costing society $37 billion (2.2% of Canadian GDP).


Have your say


This is a moderated forum. Comments will no longer be published unless they are accompanied by a first and last name and a verifiable email address. (Today's Trucking will not publish or share the email address.) Profane language and content deemed to be libelous, racist, or threatening in nature will not be published under any circumstances.

*

  • I would like some advise regarding the following. Due to what I do at work my neighbors have asked me to help.
    I live on French Drive in Mono Ontario, Mono is just outside of Orangeville. Mono is a rural town that built a 340 home subdivision three years ago, 40 of these homes are on French Drive. French drive is a typical residential road with curves and hills, the sightlines are poor. Because it is a new subdivision there are many families with small children. Three school buses, twice a day, pickup and drop off children on French Drive. Only one side of French Drive has a sidewalk, there are no crosswalks.
    Our problem is that our road was connected to a small industrial area, we also have 10 car dealerships behind us that front onto Hwy 9. Many trucks (full size 18 wheelers) have been using this road as an alternate to get to highway 9. There is another way out to Hwy 9 that doesn’t require coming through the residential area, this other route was the only way to Hwy 9 for the previous twenty years.
    We have contacted some of the Trucking Companies directly with our concerns, we have had good results, most trucks now use the old route.
    Do you have any suggestions as to how we get the local Town Council to install signs that prevent trucks coming through the residential section of this road?