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Kids typically wear backpacks to school in Regina, but not like these ones.
The City of Regina, Regina Police Service, CAA and Regina’s public and Catholic school divisions unveiled a new school zone traffic safety initiative Thursday that will employ four speed radar backpacks. Each backpack costs $7,000.
The project, which is running throughout October, will see student patrollers wearing backpacks that have radar built in to display a driver’s speed. The patrollers will be accompanied by an adult from one of the partner organizations.
Over the next two weeks, the backpacks will be used in rotation at four schools: Ethel Milliken, W.S. Hawrylak, St. Francis and St. Jerome. After that, the city and its partners will consider expanding the initiative to other schools throughout the school year.
“We’re really excited to bring this innovative program forward,” Carolyn Kalim, the city’s manager of traffic engineering, said during a media event Thursday at Ethel Milliken School.
“It takes what is usually a static sign that provides feedback to drivers as they drive through a school zone and transforms it into a mobile sign that children can wear on their back as they walk or stand in the school zone to provide that extra conspicuity to drivers as they’re driving through with the goal of ensuring that everyone driving through a school zone in Regina is slowing right down to 30 kilometres per hour.”
Regina is the first city in Saskatchewan to use the backpacks, which made their debut in Quebec.
“Unfortunately, we continue to see drivers who choose to disobey the law, despite knowing the potentially tragic outcomes. When it comes to school zones, these poor choices are affecting the children in our community,” Sgt. Mark Golaiy of the Regina Police Service said in a release.
“We welcome all partnerships that encourage safe driving behaviour and will continue to do our part by patrolling school zones and handing out tickets, very expensive ones, when necessary.”
In Regina, speed limits in school zones are 30 kilometres per hour from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Since that speed limit was set in 2019, Regina police have staged blitzes in school zones to crack down on violators.
Ethel Milliken School students Natalie Pelzer (left) and Harry Kangeles show off the speed radar backpack technology on Oct. 19, 2023. (Nicole Garn/980 CJME)
According to SGI, the fine for speeding in school zones starts at $170 and goes up depending on the driver’s speed; there’s also an added victim surcharge. Violators also will get three demerit points on their licence.
“Children’s safety is a very important part of what we do at CAA and this just made sense,” CAA senior communications specialist Angel Blair said during Thursday’s event.
“The fact that we could use our school safety patrol teams — who focus on learning the rules of the road and helping their fellow students get to and from school — it made perfect sense.”
CAA has been performing school zone safety assessments at a number of schools around the province, with observers tracking a number of different violations.
The organization said its assessment in April at two Regina schools saw more than 515 infractions by drivers, including speeding, distracted driving and other unsafe behaviour.
Harry Kangeles, a Grade 6 student at Milliken, was one of the patrollers demonstrating the new technology Thursday.
“This is fun because we like helping our school and we like helping our community,” Kangeles said.
He said wearing the backpack should have an effect on drivers.
“Wearing the backpack with the (speed limit) has an impact on everyone because they can see what their speed’s actually going and they pay more attention to the bright lights that the backpack enforces,” Kangeles said.
Natalie Pelzer, a Grade 6 student and safety patroller at Milliken, stressed the importance of safety.
“If I was in danger, I wouldn’t want to be the person that was feeling like it was unsafe to cross the road every single time you cross the road,” she said.
“Knowing that you’re safe and that (there are) people protecting you from getting hit by cars just makes you feel so much safer.”
— With files from 980 CJME’s Nicole Garn and Daniel Reech
Speed radar backpacks will be used in Regina school zones over the next few weeks as part of a new traffic safety initiative. (980 CJME file photo)