In both Quebec City and Montreal, motorists driving within school zones are speeding, data collected by the CAA-Quebec Foundation shows. In the vicinity of schools, up to 96% of drivers exceeded the legal speed limit, with some exceeding 70 km/h in a 30 km/h zone.
Posted at 12:11 p.m
Marie-Eve Morasse The press
This emerges from an “observation activity” conducted by the CAA-Quebec Foundation last week.
In Quebec, the speed measurements were taken around noon near the Saint-Claude school. In a 30 km/h zone, drivers drove at an average speed of 45 km/h.
Among the 25 measures taken, two motorists were caught driving at more than 70 km/h.
“This is a very sad fact, as 92% of motorists speeded even though the signs were clearly in place,” the foundation writes in a press release.
Montreal drivers are hardly more disciplined. As the children arrive at school early in the day, the average speed in a 30 km/h zone is 40 km/h. This gap is “slightly smaller compared to the Quebec school, but we still find that nearly all drivers, or 96%, were still significantly overspeeding,” notes the CAA-Quebec.
The behavior of motorists approaching school zones is not much better. In Quebec, 96% of them drove over the 50 km/h limit (at an average of 56.7 km/h), while in Montreal six out of ten drivers exceeded 40 km/h and drove an average of 42.4 km / H.
The CAA-Quebec Foundation believes “there is still work to be done to make school zones safe.”
“We are concerned about speeding in school zones. It’s a very bad idea to put children at risk to try and save a handful of seconds at best,” said Marco Harrison, director of the CAA-Quebec Foundation.