Police remind drivers to slow down as students head back to school
Posted Sep 1, 2016 7:22 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Students across Calgary are putting down the Pokémon Go and picking back up their protractors as schools start to open.
Catholic schools open Thursday and public schools start Tuesday after the long weekend.
That means the morning and afternoon drives are starting to include concentrations of kids around many playground zones again, so this is a good time to refresh the rules of the road in those areas.
Inevitably there are some frazzled parents who are running late and go a little faster than they should around schools located in playground zones, but Staff Sgt. Paul Stacey says since the city has moved to making those zones permanent, 365 days a year, it’s been easier for people to remember to slow down.
“We are going to be concentrating our enforcement largely on the playground zones, especially that have the schools in them, and we’re hoping that given the fact people have had a good year to adjust to this that we see better numbers this year than we saw last year,” he explained.
Stacey admits there have been more tickets handed out in those areas since the change, but he says that’s probably because there’s been more enforcement.
The fines in those 30 km/h zones range from $78 at 1 km/h over the speed limit to $474 at 50 km/h over. Any faster than that will likely mean a trip to see a judge.
