673 tickets written for school zone speeding in September, SGI says

SGI is revealing details from its September Traffic Safety Spotlight.

Last month, the focus was on school zone safety and SGI found police wrote 673 tickets for drivers speeding through school zones.

That number is less than half the number of speeders caught during last year’s focus on school zones, SGI says.

“Getting a school zone speeding ticket is even worse than getting sent to the principal’s office (20 km/h over the speed limit = a $310 ticket, plus three demerits), but the most important reason drivers need to slow down in school zones is to #KeepKidsSafe,” says SGI in a news release.

There were other infractions that drivers were cited for, including five tickets for failing to yield to a pedestrian at an intersection or crosswalk ($230 fine and three demerit points) and another ticket for failing to stop five metres from a school bus when safety lights were in use ($360 fine and four demerits).

Other results reported by police during September include:

• 451 impaired driving offences, including 370 Criminal Code charges;
• 660 distracted driving offences, including 548 tickets related to cellphone use while driving;
• 414 tickets related to seatbelts, car seats or booster seats; and
• 6,977 speeding or aggressive driving tickets (in addition to the school zone speeding tickets noted above).

This month, police are looking for distracted driving, which carries a $580 fine and four demerit points on a first offence, escalating to a $1,400 fine, four demerits and a seven-day vehicle impoundment for a second offence. A third offence is a $2,100 fine, four demerits and another seven-day vehicle impoundment.