D’you care?

During the safety campaign, a radio spot will be broadcast on more than 25 Quebec radio stations. Titled “D’you see me?” and mirroring the French campaign, which asks the same question “M’as-tu vu?”, the radio spot will be aired during peak listening hours on weekdays, reminding drivers to slow down and obey traffic lights and be especially careful around school buses.

Seems pretty obvious advice, right? Do we really need a campaign reminding us to watch out for kids and remain vigilant around schools?

This is the 22nd year that the campaign takes place and, according to the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec, 1,081 tickets were issued in 2008 for failing to make a mandatory stop when a school bus was flashing its lights. In 2007, that number was only slightly higher (1,109), clearly indicating that no real progress has been made.

Want to read something even more troubling? In 2009, 40,866 speeding tickets were handed out to Montreal drivers failing to slow down to the mandatory 30 km/h in school zones. Why are so many people failing to get the message? Why, despite so many efforts to raise awareness and so many measures enacted in schools to make student transportation safer, accidents continue to happen and drivers continue to defy traffic laws?

As a parent you can do your best to drill into little Billy’s or Sarah’s head that they shouldn’t cross the street without looking in both directions or run around or in front of a school bus without ensuring that the bus driver has seen them. You can attend city council meetings and fight for additional stop signs and/or reduced speed zones, but, at the end of the day, those behind the wheel bear the largest responsibility.

No matter how many awareness campaigns take place or how many times we remind our children (who are only children, after all) how to behave while walking, riding their bike or getting on and off a school bus, it’s ultimately the drivers who need to be, as one reader put it "educated, re-educated and pulled off the road" if they are incapable of giving a damn. The problem is that civic responsibility and respect for each other can’t really be legislated; they can only be instilled. The question shouldn’t really be “D’you see me?”. It should be “D’you care?”