On the same day that the letter “Saanich ignores dangerous crossing” was printed (Nov. 29,2017) the Saanich News also printed a front page article entitled “Saanich among Canada’s safest communities”.
The article went on to explain that Saanich ranked below average in all categories of crime. The Saanich Police department is to be applauded and commended for a job well done. However, with the crime rate down so much, what are they doing with all the time they used to spend chasing the bad guys?
One would hope that they could find some spare time to deal with a chronic problem in Saanich that has had little attention paid to it for many years. Bad driving behaviour is an absolute horror show. Speeding, distracted driving, failing to show even the slightest courtesy to other road users, and last, but not least, loud mufflers and loud boom-boxes are violations that are rife in Saanich, and seem to go unnoticed and unpunished.
Pedestrians, cyclists, and equestrians are completely on their own in this municipality. Their plight is ignored by most council members, Saanich Engineering, and the police. Even the numerous petitions, with signatures from over 95 per cent of the residents in some neighbourhoods, are just tossed into a file cabinet, never to be read. Perhaps some of that spare time freed up by the steadily decreasing crime rate could be devoted to protecting public safety in other areas of concern.
Bob Etheridge
Saanich