Page 1467 - Week 05 - Thursday, 7 May 2015
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zones and to think about the vulnerable road users in those particular areas. It is a community responsibility to make sure that our children are safe when they are walking to and from school and that those driving by school zones and into school car parks exercise the utmost care and consideration for rules and speed zones.
ACT Policing conducts enforcement activities at all our schools and at least one school each term. Police not only target speeding but also target unsafe driving practices in school zones, such as double parking, parking on the median strip and conducting U-turns on pedestrian crossings. ACT Policing seeks wherever possible to provide a high visibility presence on our roadways near schools around peak times when parents are dropping off and picking up children.
In term 2 of last year, ACT Policing, in partnership with our government, delivered a road safety education pilot to four schools in Belconnen. The participating schools were Macquarie, Macgregor, Southern Cross and Mount Rogers. During the pilot, 1,116 high visibility vests were given to students across these schools. Students were encouraged to wear their vests walking to and from schools to increase the awareness of drivers in or around the school zones. If I remember correctly, I think Ms Berry donned a vest or she was walking alongside the school students with those vests.
The goal of this pilot was also to contribute to improving children’s health and wellbeing by making it safer for them to be active on their way to and from school. Constable Kenny Koala and the ACT police have attended 54 classes and presented the equivalent of 27 hours of road safety information to students. They have worked with these schools to help students understand road safety awareness.
The pilot was made possible with a $10,000 grant from ACT Health in support of the ride or walk to school initiative. ACT Policing’s Kenny Koala program supports primary school children to engage in a variety of safety awareness messages, including road safety, cycle awareness and stranger danger. Policing employs an intelligence-led policing model to identify and target traffic hotspots. ACT schools and educational facilities are no exception.
In my discussions with the Chief Police Officer, I intend through ministerial directions to have a much stronger focus on safety around schools in the coming 12 months. The correspondence I get in my office as minister for education around school safety really does highlight the need for us as a community to come as one to this issue. It is not a responsibility of government alone. It is also the responsibility of drivers on the roads to be responsible for safety around our schools.
Police rely on timely information from the public to identify driver behaviour near schools that may place any pedestrian, particularly children, in harm’s way. This information informs the direction of traffic enforcement activities around a particular school and assists police to develop future strategies to ensure community safety on all roads near our schools.
ACT Policing works with the broader school community and school principals in respect of road safety. I want to thank Mr Rattenbury for making this statement and
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