Fort MacMurray, highway safety

Fort MacMurray residents experienced the real consequences of vehicle accidents with the help of a new campaign to promote highway safety. The Coalition for a Safer 63 ad 881 started a new campaign to help make residents aware of collisions and to remind them to drive safely on the local highways. The coalition placed wrecked cars at various locations around Fort MacMurray so that people could see what happens during collisions. The vehicles were placed outside of Father Patrick Mercredi High School, Tim Hortons, and even Canadian Tire. The goal was to raise awareness for The Pledge campaign started by the coalition. According to the executive director of the coalition Debbie Hammond “We placed a vehicle from a Highway 63 fatality at three busy sites around the city in a symbolic effort once again to raise awareness of the pledge and our goal to get more people thinking about their driving habits and whether they make safe choices behind the wheel.”

The highway safety campaign is a grassroots campaign targeted to the Fort MacMurray community. Hammond continued by saying “When you look at it, (we want people) to start to think about what happens when we’re on the highway driving high speeds and come to a sudden stop because we hit something. That vehicle is not going to save us. It’s not a safety net. That’s what happens in the real world when there are serious collisions.” Debbie continued “With this campaign, because it’s a community, grassroots campaign, we are targeting the community at large. Folks in Fort McMurray at any given time have to get on Highway 63 because they’ve got to get to the larger cities. We can all make a difference on the highway. At the end of the day, if we all take that pledge and we all pledge to be safer drivers, we could all work together towards that.”