New Halifax crosswalk safety campaign begins next week

HALIFAX – A new crosswalk safety campaign will launch next week in Halifax as the city hopes to reverse the recent trend of vehicle-pedestrian collisions.

Heads Up, Halifax will aim to raise awareness about the shared safety responsibility of everybody the road — drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

Crossing the street in Halifax can be dangerous– in September, there were 22 vehicle-pedestrian collisions, and 167 have been reported in all this year. Three were fatal and more than half occurred in crosswalks.

“Council recognized that any crosswalk incident where there’s collision between a pedestrian and a car is a serious matter,” said Bruce DeBaie, the municipality’s managing director of corporate communications.

The six-week campaign, which will run from Oct. 20 until the end of November and include Crosswalk Safety Awareness Day on Nov. 5, will be promoted through advertising and social media.

“You’re going to see it on billboards, on posters, in newspaper advertising,” said DeBaie. “There will be a high frequency in social media such as Facebook advertising.”

Resident Clare Bilek says she thinks the campaign is a great idea.

“It’s certainly timely because of all the recent car-pedestrian accidents and cycling accidents as well,” she said. “Anything that can raise awareness and just give drivers and pedestrians a second thought so that they just take a little bit more time…I think there’s a lot of distraction of everybody involved.”

DeBaie says the idea behind the campaign is to “get away from the blame game” among everybody on the road.

Although school zones weren’t cited as a specific area of concern for the city Tanya Haner says children need to be taught the importance of crosswalk safety.

“It would be great if you could bring it to the school and talk to the kids about that because that’s something I do try to teach my kids, and it’s something that they need to hear more often,” she said.

DeBaie says one good tip for everybody is to establish eye contact before making a move into traffic.

Another six-week awareness campaign is planned for mid-February.