Burnaby Mounties are joining forces with police departments across the country this week to promote safe driving on Canada’s streets.
The national campaign runs from May 13 to 19 and aims to educate the public on the importance of road safety. During the campaign, officers across the country and throughout Burnaby will be patrolling the streets looking for “behaviours that put drivers, passengers and other road users at risk,” stated a press release from the Burnaby RCMP.
Police will be on the lookout for some of the most dangerous driving habits, including impaired driving, lack of seatbelts, speeding, distracted driving and aggressive driving, the release added.
Mounties are asking both drivers and pedestrians to be observant and cautious when using Burnaby streets and to “exercise safe driving behaviours,” according to Sgt. David Bell of the Burnaby traffic services section.
“The deaths, pain and emotional trauma resulting from collisions caused by careless and thoughtless drivers is preventable,” Bell said, in the release. “Here in Burnaby there have been 45 fatalities and serious injury collisions in the last five years. … While these are just numbers, the lifelong impact on individuals, families and friends in our community simply cannot be measured.”
Already this year, there have been several fatal and near-fatal collisions.
Just last week, a 52-year-old man was killed while riding his bike near Brentwood Town Centre. He was crossing Beta Avenue when he was hit by an oncoming car. Investigators believe the cyclist, who was pronounced dead at the scene, wasn’t wearing a helmet.
In March, a man in his 20s was killed when his car crashed into a tree on Goring Street.
Two months earlier, two pedestrians suffered minor injuries when they were hit by cars. On Jan. 28, a female pedestrian was struck by an oncoming car while crossing at Smith Avenue and Canada Way. The following day, a 27-year-old man was hit in the 8000 block of Winston Street.
Canada Road Safety Week, an initiative sponsored by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and Transport Canada, is part of the Canada Road Safety Strategy of 2015. The strategy’s goal is to make Canadian roads the safest in the world by 2015.
