How To Get Traffic | Safety Plan Seeks To Make City Streets Safer

Traffic safety officials hope a new plan to reduce mayhem on Edmonton streets will save more than a dozen lives and prevent 100 serious crashes over the next five years.

A program worked out by police and the office of traffic safety aims to cut the average number of fatalities and serious injury collisions five per cent by 2015, according to a city report.

They want to achieve this improvement by putting up to 20 more officers on traffic squads, beefing up the personnel involved in 24-hour speed enforcement blitzes and continuing to focus on 12 dangerous corridors.

They'll also keep an inventory of locations where engineering improvements can make roads safer, says Gerry Shimko, executive director of the office of traffic safety.

This might mean adding left-turn signals at intersections or changing the configuration of right-turn cutoffs so it's easier to see, he said.

"Just through that process of co-ordinated enforcement and engineering changes we generally see a five-per-cent improvement over the city norm."

The number of Edmonton injury collisions peaked at 7,638 in 2002, dropping to 3,768 last year even as the population grew by more than 100,000 people.

Better design can have a big influence. The exit to Victoria Trail from Yellowhead Trail saw 100 collisions over three years before it was upgraded, but in the past two years there have been two crashes, Shimko said.

Reducing how fast drivers go is also important, because every one km/h drop in average speeds translates into a three-per-cent reduction in collisions, he said.

It can be hard to change bad habits. Even though the eight to 10 annual 24-hour enforcement campaigns are advertised with portable signs, police still issue 1,000 tickets each time, he said.

However, Shimko thinks motorists are improving overall.

"We're seeing less and less violations occurring in all the systems - in intersection safety cameras, photo enforcement," he said.

"I think people are catching on that they can function at a safer speed, within the speed limit. It seems to be showing some promising results."

Traffic officers are particularly valuable for educating motorists and dealing with the small number of high-risk drivers who continue to get behind the wheel when they are drunk, uninsured or their licences are suspended, Shimko said.

The plan, being discussed Tuesday by council's transportation and infrastructure committee, is expected to cost $2.4 million by 2014, excluding any expense for setting up two additional traffic enforcement squads.

It will also feature research into the impact of impaired driving, whether from drugs, alcohol, or poor physical and mental health.

Health issues are an emerging trend in this area, Shimko said.

"Any time you have an aging population, that's part of it, but people with diabetes, or (who are) overweight, are at higher risk of medical cognitive impairment."