The Saanich Police will be actively participating in this year’s Canada Road Safety Week starting at 12:01am, May 16th, to 11:59pm May 23rd. This is a national initiative of the Traffic Committee of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
This week has been chosen as it is the first ‘summer’ long weekend. More people will be travelling and there is a higher frequency of collisions. During this week, you will notice an increased presence of Saanich Police Patrol and Traffic Safety Unit officers monitoring our highways and local streets during this week.
The focus during Canada Road Safety Week will be on behaviours that reduce risk for drivers, passengers and other road users: sober and alert driving, seat belt use, and refraining from aggressive driving. Aggressive driving habits include behaviour like speeding, following too closely, and intersection violations.
“Last year in Saanich, we had three fatal collisions and 477 injury accidents, statistics our men and women are working hard to reduce” says Sgt. Dean Jantzen. So far this year, there has been one fatal collision and 153 injury accidents, on pace for over 600 such accidents.
Saanich Police officers will be deploying not only in cars but on motorcycles, bicycles and on foot. Officers may also deploy in vehicles that look nothing like police cars to observe driving behaviour.
This initiative is an enforcement driven campaign to increase awareness and compliance with safe driving measures and to ultimately reduce crashes and deaths.
Canada Road Safety Week is sponsored by Transport Canada and endorsed by police as part of “Road Safety Strategy 2015”, which is the goal of making Canada’s roads the safest in the world.
Media partners are invited to contact us if you wish the opportunity to view an operation or to participate in a ride-along with one of our Traffic Safety Unit professionals.