Richmond RCMP, along with a host of other emergency service personnel, city staff and school children briefly shut down one of the city’s busiest intersections Thursday morning to draw awareness to pedestrian safety.
Jiving to the Bee Gees 1970s disco Staying Alive, the group boogied across the No. 3 and Saba roads as stopped commuters crowded the adjacent streets, many with smartphones, iPods and touchscreen tablets recording the spectacle.
Following the event, volunteers handed out some of the 10,000 reflective discs provided by ICBC that pedestrians can clip on to their clothing to make them more visible to motorists, especially during the dark fall and winter months.
RCMP spokeswoman, Cpl. Stephanie Ashton, said the campaign called SLOW (Stop, Look, Observe, Walk) is designed to change the culture of pedestrians in the city — with an emphasis on recent immigrants who may not be in line with local pedestrian safety standards.
“With the diverse population we have here, in many places when you walk out into the street the cars move around you,” Ashton said. “That’s not the way traffic moves in B.C., and particularly Richmond.
Ashton added the campaign is designed to educate pedestrians that they need to stop and ensure they make eye contact with motorists before stepping off the curb.
“Last year we had nine, fatal pedestrian crashes, and 21 very serious incidents, and we were able to attribute that to people walking in dark clothing, jaywalking, and going out into traffic without really stopping to have a look,” Ashton said.
To help get the message out the local immigrant population the SLOW campaign has volunteers that represent 56 different languages.
“If we can reach as many people as possible in Mandarin, Cantonese, Punjabi, whatever language that person speaks, it will take us a few months, but hopefully that will shift the culture a little bit,” Ashton said.
Hopes are the flashmob will go viral on the Internet and act as an awareness tool that can have appeal across generational and cultural barriers.
“The is timely with the time change this weekend, that’s when the crashes seem to be happening more,” Ashton said. “We’ve already had one fatality on Oct. 20, a second person is in critical condition after an incident yesterday.
“We’re hoping if we can get people to change some of their behaviours we’ll have fewer of these accidents that just don’t have to happen.”
