The Sûreté du Québec adopts the Vision Zero policy to improve road safety

Article content

Saying it felt it had reached “a ceiling” in reducing the number of fatal accidents on the province’s highways and highways, the Sûreté du Québec announced Thursday that it will embark on a five-year program to increase the based on Vision Zero. policy already adopted in many Canadian jurisdictions, including the city of Montreal.

Article content

“We are doing well,” said Captain Paul Leduc of the provincial force’s road safety division. “But there is always room for improvement. That is why we were inspired by Vision Zero, which has been very successful all over the world ”.

First adopted in Sweden in 1997, Vision Zero is based on the idea that road fatalities can be prevented by eliminating as much as possible the risks caused by such incidents. However, eliminating the risk is not the sole responsibility of the police, but also of legislators, transport officials and municipal authorities.

The policy was adopted by the City of Montreal in 2018. SQ’s policy would see regional detachments working in conjunction with local authorities to address specific problems in those areas.

Article content

Since 2016, the province’s annual average of road deaths has held steady at around 229 despite a 300,000 increase in the number of licensed drivers and a 400,000 increase in the number of vehicles on those roads during the term.

Leduc said that road safety remains the top safety priority in the municipalities served by the SQ and that the new policy will involve paying even more attention to the risky behavior of motorists.

He acknowledged that in the short term, Quebec drivers who comply with the rules will not experience any tangible change with the adoption of the new policy.

“Specifically, you will see us working more specifically on the right issues in the right places and at the right times,” he said. “Hopefully this will result in a downward trend in fatal crashes… we are not reinventing the wheel here and starting from scratch. But they will see a difference with (more) operations by various police forces and with (provincial) highway inspectors ”.