Councillor wants helmet bylaw checkstops
Public safety director says officers won't chase down children to enforce new rule
Randi Beers
Northern News Services
Published Friday, October 3, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
City councillor Cory Vanthuyne is calling on the municipal enforcement department to set up checkstops on the McMahon Frame Lake Trail in an effort to enforce the city's new helmet bylaw last summer.
Daughter Payton Major, left, mom Taylor Major and son Kaleb Major head home after taking a swim at the pool Sunday afternoon. The City of Yellowknife will start fully enforcing its new helmet bylaw next spring in the hopes more people take the Major family's lead in bike safety. - Shane Magee/NNSL photo |
Council passed the bylaw - which requires children under the ages of 18 to wear a helmet while riding bikes, skateboards or "other wheeled apparatus" - in May but it has yet to be fully enforced. So far, bylaw officers have only cracked down on it with free ice cream, trips to the pool and friendly reminders.
Vanthuyne applauded the city's efforts to educate people this summer and offered up the checkpoint idea as one way to enforce the bylaw next year.
"The checkstop could be on (the) Frame Lake Trail with officers pulling people without helmets aside and letting them know about awareness," said Vanythuyne, who was a vocal proponent of the bylaw, although he voted against it at one point after council decided against requiring adults to wear helmets.
Dennis Marchiori, the city's director of public safety, said the city is still ironing out details about how the department will enforce the bylaw with children. He said Vanthuyne's checkstop idea would work with the city's plans to be proactive and promote education.
One point he did clarify is that the bylaw officers will hand the $25 fines directly to teens 16 and 17 years of age, but fines to youth younger than that who earn fines will go directly to the parents.
"Could you imagine giving a fine to a 12-year-old?" asked Marchiori.
"Yeah, I can't either. We don't want to scare kids about our presence in the community. We just want to let them know we're trying to protect them when they're riding around. We want to let them know they might not be doing anything silly, but somebody else could do something that impacts them."
He said children will not be arrested and their bikes or skateboards not taken away if found not wearing helmets and they can't be identified or their parents immediately found.
"What's in the public interest?" asked Marchiori. "Are we really going to chase a kid down for a helmet bylaw?"
Coun. Niels Konge, the only councillor to vote against the helmet bylaw at final reading, expressed concerns about the feasibility of fully enforcing the bylaw with children.
"How are we going to implement this?" asked Konge. "That's a very good question. I asked it while council was debating this issue. I think it's pretty unclear."
Marchiori said if the officer knows who the child is he or she may visit the child's school or home and raise the issue there.
"We don't want to put fear into kids' lives (because) it may be they have a helmet or left it at home," he said.
Over the course of the summer, the city has recorded 124 instances where bylaw officers have "enforced" the new bylaw by handing out coupons for ice cream and passes to Ruth Inch Memorial Pool for wearing helmets and lecturing children about helmet safety when not.
There were a couple instances when officers have given the safety talk to parents. According to Marchiori, these instances were when parents were present when the child was caught without a helmet.
In these cases, Marchiori said officers talked to the parents about what to look for when selecting a helmet, where helmets can be purchased and the difference between bike helmets and other types of helmets, such as ones used for snowboarding.
"We found the parents enjoyed having this discussion with somebody in uniform and kids probably took it more seriously too," he said.
Marchiori noted the city hasn't come up with an all-encompassing plan to deal with enforcing the helmet bylaw with unco-operative children, adding officers will have to deal with these instances on a case-by-case basis.
Over the course of the new school year, Marchiori said bylaw officers and city officials will visit schools to educate children about the new bylaw and bike helmet safety.
