Slow Down and Pull Over, Dammit

I recently received an email from a Community Herald reader expressing concern about the lack of of public awareness around a new traffic law.

“You are likely aware there is a new law on the books related to how you are to pass an emergency vehicle stopped on the side of the road with flashing lights activated,” he wrote. “I figured it was of sufficient importance that [a sign] would be posted at the Nova Scotia-New Brunswick border along with [information about] cell phones, honey bees, 911, 511, etc. Considering that this is not a law in New Brunswick, it would be a logical addition.

“...I believe you are the perfect person to contact the Department of Transportation and find out why they are rather secretive about this new law.”

Sir, thanks for your faith in me. Let’s look at this new law:

In May of this year, a law was passed which requires drivers, when passing a stopped emergency vehicle with its lights flashing, to slow down to 60 km/hr, and to leave an empty lane between themselves and the stopped vehicle, if they can do so safely.

The fines for not slowing down, or not moving over, range from $340.21 to $685.21 for a first offence.

I had heard about this law, but a few of my friends, for instance, hadn’t, so I contacted Lindsay Lewis, spokesperson for the Nova Scotia department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal and asked her what kind of campaign had been undertaken to spread the word.

“We put together a fairly comprehensive education campaign leading up to the law,” she told me. “About a month out, we put out a news release just saying the law was coming. We put one out again the day before. And we also put together print ads, radio ads, TV ads [on the community channel], and online ads.

“We also made up close to 5000 post cards for emergency responders to give out ...and we made posters and sent them out to visitor information centres, Access Nova Scotia centres, and public spaces like that.”

I asked if her department had been able to gauge the overall level of public awareness of the campaign, but she said that would be a difficult thing to measure. “We did get some feedback that people still weren't aware of it, so we put together another campaign and ran it over long weekends during the summer months.”

I put my reader's suggestion, about putting a sign up at the border, to Ms. Lewis. “It's tricky,” she said, “because we have a number of road safety laws in Nova Scotia, and you can't put a sign up for every single one. We have one up for the cell phone law. We have a couple of other ones – the seatbelt law, obviously. ...We do put this information in the visitor information centres, and in the Doers’ and Dreamers’ Guide, so hopefully consumers can get the information that way.”

I’m with my reader on this one. I don’t think it would be that problematic for drivers to have to read another sign at the border. However, I would suggest that this whole issue is less about secrecy and more about a somewhat ineffectual public information campaign.

But, thanks to his concern, we can safely say that at least a few more people are now in the know about the law.

To find out more, go to gov.ns.ca/tran/hottopics/keepmesafe.asp.