Katrina Owens
Lakeside Leader

Pedestrian safety and school zones were hot topics at the March 6 traffic safety meeting. Staff Sgt. Chris Murphy said the Slave Lake RCMP is planning to focus more on those two areas in 2017.
“That area has been drawn to my attention from the community,” said Murphy about the Highway 88 crossing at Caribou Trail. “My big concern there is foot traffic – there are a lot of people trying to get across there and there isn’t any safe way to do it. Come ball season more will come and the situation will get worse.”
“We truly have to work together to get a crosswalk put in there,” said Barry Sallstrom from RoadSafe. “The Town of Slave Lake, the province and Sawridge – agreements need to be made.”
“I’ll be presenting this to Town council as part of the RCMP’s priorities for the year,” said Murphy. “It’s been identified as a problem for years now – this isn’t something new that has just popped up. If we can get a safe passage there, that’s a big win for us.”
Murphy added, “I hope now is the time and I think we’re all on board because sooner or later we’re bound to have a tragic situation happen there.”
As previously mentioned, another area causing concern is school zones.

“Speed isn’t the biggest concern – it is parking and illegal left centre turns,” said senior peace officer Mark Becker.
For your information, ‘illegal left centre turns’ refers to when a driver goes over the centre line in order to pull into a parking spot.
“C.J. Schurter is awful for that!” echoed Team EPIC co-ordinator Darcy Hoover. “There has to be a way we can be on foot because when you’re there in your cars it doesn’t happen.”
Hoover added, “After school it’s much more busy foot traffic-wise, so there is more of a chance of someone being hit.”
‘How do we stop this from happening?’ was the big question floating around the table.
“Clearer lines would pretty much eliminate any issue,” said Becker. “And we’re trying to bring in more resources,” added Murphy.