Road Watch LaSalle
For more information, contact Jennifer Rezes, LaSalle Police Service,
519-969-5210 or jrezes@police.lasalle.on.ca
 The ROAD WATCH program is a community initiative started as a result of the high number of fatal vehicle collisions.
Awareness, Education and Enforcement are the goals of the ROAD WATCH program.
The ROAD WATCH program gives residents and visitors an opportunity to help keep our community roads safe by reporting dangerous, aggressive driving.
The ROAD WATCH program has now expanded into other communities including LaSalle. Road Watch LaSalle currently utilizes a portion of the Town of LaSalle web server in order to promote its goals, mandate, and deliver important information.
Mandate:
"The ROAD WATCH mandate is to reduce automotive collisions and fatalities through Awareness, Education and Enforcement of road safety."
There are three main components to the ROAD WATCH program, Awareness, Education and Enforcement. We all know that enforcement alone will not work. We must involve people to take ownership of the problems of dangerous, aggressive driving so that they can be part of the solution and modify their behavior and attitudes.
Awareness of unsafe driving practices and promoting general road safety is accomplished through giving seminars, media coverage, advertising, public speaking engagements and promotional material made available to community members.
Education is promoted at several levels. Our secondary school students are our future drivers and it is important for them to learn about the choices that they are making and how those choices will impact on their lives. We spend time at schools involved in assemblies. We also have been working with our secondary school students in the design and production of a poster on road safety. Another avenue to explore is having the Driver Education program include a session on ROAD WATCH, how it works and what dangerous, aggressive driving is.
Enforcement of safety on the roads through ROAD WATCH assists police services to identify unsafe driving acts or "hot spots" that are traffic problem areas.
ROAD WATCH encourages citizens to participate in a program to improve road safety in their community by reporting unsafe driving behaviours and "hot spots" in the community where unsafe driving habits are common occurrences. Citizen report forms have been designed to give police services the necessary information to appropriately deal with the acts of unsafe driving.
Community members and motorists are asked to complete a Citizen Report Form when they observe a motorist demonstrating unsafe driving behaviour. The forms must be signed and made as complete as possible.
This signed form helps safeguard the system against abuse. This is for statistical use only and is held in the strictest of confidence by the Police Service. The completed forms are placed in one of many secure drop boxes that are conveniently located throughout the community at participating and/or sponsoring business and/or organizations.
The Citizen Report Forms can also be faxed to your local police service. The completed forms are picked up on a regular basis and are verified by the police for accuracy. The police will send an "information letter" to the registered vehicle owner explaining that their vehicle was observed being operated in an unsafe manner at a specific time and location and asking for voluntary compliance.
If the vehicle owner was not driving their vehicle it is their responsibility to speak with the person driving the vehicle. If the vehicle owner wishes they can contact the police to discuss the incident. If further Citizen Report Forms are received on the same vehicle further letters will be written to the registered vehicle owner and personal contact by the police will be made.
The ROAD WATCH program encourages the community to take responsibility for their driving behaviour and attitudes. It does work. The components of AWARENESS and EDUCATION take some work but are worth the effort. We have seen excellent results when the program is implemented properly.
If you would like more information on the ROAD WATCH program please fill in the Information Request Form and you will receive information on how to start the program, what is involved, the licensing arrangements and all the specs on the signs, etc. These forms are located at various locations through out LaSalle. |
