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King, YRP combat infractions in pilot project

January 15, 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Mark Pavilons

A move by King Township and York Regional Police may just provide some deterrent to bad driving habits.
Mayor Steve Pellegrini urged YRP to place a couple of decommissioned police vehicles at strategic locations around the municipality in a pilot project.
The move is just another way to address the ongoing issues of speeding and other infractions in King communities. The mayor and councillors have long expressed the desire to get motorists to slow down and staff are working on several traffic calming measures.
“I think this is really going to work,” Pellegrini said. “I am delighted that the Township and YRP have partnered to pilot ‘decoy cruisers’ as calming measures; we will try everything to slow people down.”
The method has been used by YRP in the past but vehicles are scarce as almost all are sent to auction after they’re decommissioned, as means of cost recovery.
“It is generally a good deterrent when deployed but once removed people, over time, drivers will tend to migrate back to their bad habits,” said YRP Superintendent Randy Slade.
He added “almost all of the offenders are all local residents.”
Road safety remains one of YRP’s main priorities as it relates to community safety, he pointed out.
“Speed reduction, through enforcement and education is one of our 5 pillars contained in our Road Safety Strategy. Speed plays a role in every catastrophic or fatal motor vehicle collision, although safety equipment has greatly reduced the number of both these types of collisions the human body is limited in the amount of trauma it can sustain to survive. The force applied to anyone, be it driver, passenger, cyclist, and/or pedestrian in any type of motor vehicle collision comes from speed. Road speeds are set based on many factors but are in place to allow drivers the ability to properly react in a timely manner to slow down and/or take evasive measures to avoid collisions.
“As speeds increase above the recommended posted limit it greatly reduces the driver’s ability to react to sudden changes that occur on the roadway. As everyone can easily deduce, significantly high speeds are dangerous regardless of the location.
“However, a vehicle traveling at 60 km/h in a posted 40km/h zone (usually a residential area or school zone) has to be more readily aware of cyclists and pedestrians (children) who may inadvertently entry the road way. Impacting one of these venerable road users at lower speeds can be fatal. Driving at the posted 40 km/h provides drivers a better opportunity of avoiding a collision that has a potential for catastrophic results. It is said that impacting a cyclist or pedestrian at a speed of 30 km/h or higher will result in life altering injuries or death.”
Be careful out there and watch your speed is the message all drivers should take away from this.



         

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