The LEA*DRS Program Basis Phase Two

PROGRAM BASIS

Introduction

The LEADRS Program, where LEADRS stands for 'LEAding Canadians to DRiving Safer', is a method for significantly improving the safety and economics of travel on public roads without increasing average travel time.

The articles in this section of the website describe the basis for the Phase 2 Pilot of The LEADRS Program. They are a continuation of earlier articles that were prepared during the operation of the Phase 1 Pilot. The previous articles can be found in the Phase One section of this website.

The Municipal Government Act 20100803
Safe and Viable Communities

Introduction
Canada's provinces and territories were created by the British North America Act of 1867. Subsequently, provinces legislated a third level of government which included counties, towns, cities, and so on. In the case of Alberta, the Municipal Government Act authorized local governments such as the City of Red Deer.

The Municipal Government Act requires municipalities to develop and maintain safe and viable communities. Consequently, before a municipal government may approve any initiative within its corporate limits, such as a traffic safety improvement program, it must be confident that the safety and viability of its communities will not be jeopardized.

A complication arises because the Municipal Government Act does not define safe, viable or community.

In fact, what safe, viable and community appears to mean in the Municipal Government Act is different from what those terms mean to The LEADRS Program. The difference does not mean The LEADRS Program will hinder or prevent safe and viable communities in terms of the Municipal Government Act. Rather, what it means is that the safer and more viable communities that result from The LEADRS Program will be distinguishable from the safe and viable communities required to comply with the Municipal Government Act.

Communities
The definition of community that fits with the Municipal Government Act includes both an identifiable residential area, which is under the direction of a single municipal government, and the persons who live there.

A community event, such as a traffic collision, is an activity which occurs in that identifiable area and which may or may not involve one of the community residents.

A community can also be defined as a group of people who have one or more features or values in common and who identify with each other due to those shared characteristics. In the case of The LEADRS Program, community members are people who live in the same or similar postal code areas and who share an interest in being safer road users wherever they happen to be.

A community event, such as a traffic collision, is an activity which involves one of the community members and may or may not occur in that residential area.

Safe
There are two dimensions to safeness, of freedom from danger.

The degree of safeness can be the subjective aggregate of the feelings or perceptions of an individual or a community about being free from danger. Due to the absence of a definition of "safe" or a method for measuring it, this is considered to be the aspect of safeness that the Municipal Government Act intended when it required municipalities to maintain safe communities.
Alternately, the degree of safeness can be determined objectively through external measurement of behavioural and environmental factors. The LEADRS Program determines changes in traffic safeness by comparing the number of community team members involved in recent monthly traffic collisions with their average results for previous years.

Viable
Similar to safeness, viability has subjective and objective dimensions.

Once again, because the Municipal Government Act does not define viability nor provide a method for measuring it, it is felt that the subjective aspect of viability is what the Municipal Government Act intended when it required municipalities to maintain viable communities.
The objective of The LEADRS Program is to improve community traffic safety. Changes in community traffic safety and viability, however, vary in the same direction; consequently, if community traffic safety is improving, it will not be necessary to measure community viability to know that it is also improving.

Whether a municipal community is safe and viable is the result of what happens or does not happen in an identifiable area which is under the direction of a single municipal government. The people involved in the determining events may or may not be residents of that area.

Whether a LEADRS Program community is safer and more viable is the result of how effective community members are in reducing involvement in traffic collisions. The location of the determining events may or may not be in the area where they reside.

In one case, a safe community is the result of the actions of all persons in a given area: in the other, a safe community is the result of the actions of a given group of persons in all areas. Local officials can be confident that changes in the traffic safety of a LEADRS Program community will not correspond to similar changes in a particular municipal community; consequently, their requirement to develop and maintain safe and viable communities will not be undermined by any timely and meaningful data released through The LEADRS Program.

Safety Information is Withheld 20100707

Earlier this year, it became apparent that the City of Red Deer had received a report from one of its engineering consultants about safety aspects of some intersections. Through the Access to Information process, Safer Vehicle Use Limited acquired a copy of the report entitled "2009 Red Deer In-Service Road Safety Reviews". The purpose of that access request was to place the information on this website so that Red Deer roadway users might inform themselves of driver actions and intersection features that often lead to readily avoidable collisions.

You can access the various sections of the Road Safety Reviews by downloading the PDFs that are linked to the items listed on the right sidebar of this screen.

Sections of the report are up to 10.6 MB in size; consequently, they may not download promptly. If you are unsuccessful in downloading one or more of the PDFs, send an email to info@leadrs.ca with a list of the PDFs you want.

Note that some portions of the Reviews have been blacked out. Where this has occurred, an explanatory note such as "Severed per s. 24(1)(a)" will be found in the redacted area. The reference is to a portion of the Alberta Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which is copied below.

Advice from Officials
24(1) The head of a public body may refuse to disclose
information to an applicant if the disclosure could reasonably
be expected to reveal.
(a) advice, proposals, recommendations, analyses or policy options
developed by or for a public body or a member of the Executive Council,

Our interpretation is that the City of Red Deer withheld the information from Safer Vehicle Use Limited because Safer Vehicle Use Limited wanted to share it with the people driving in Red Deer. The City of Red Deer, as owner of the information, could also have shared it directly with its taxpayers, but not only chose not to do so, but also chose to block anyone else from doing so.

It seems neither right nor sensible that the City would use the funds of its taxpayers, to learn about the significance of hazards to its people that the City has been involved in creating and/or monitoring, and then prevent that information from reaching its citizenry. After reviewing provincial legislation and policing contracts, the City's disregard did make sense. But it still does not seem right.

The next articles in this series will share why provincial legislation and policing contracts can result in the City of Red Deer being required to withhold pertinent road safety information from its citizens. (Due to the similarities between the legislation of different provinces and states, you should expect to find that what is revealed here about the Red Deer and Alberta situations apply equally well elsewhere.)

Do not be discouraged into thinking that it takes forever to change provincial laws; consequently, it will take forever before Red Deer and other Alberta cities can be in a legal position to be forthcoming about sharing the traffic safety information they have. Rather, the strategies in the Red Deer Drivers' Challenge are practical ways of avoiding those barriers as they currently exist, thereby allowing prompt sharing of much of the withheld information, and leading to the road safety improvements that will result from better informed road users.