Do crossing guards make it safer for children going to school? Surprisingly, there is no evidence to support that argument.
Once again, Barrie city councillors are being asked to consider launching an adult crossing guard program in the city. An online petition has garnered about 1,000 signatures and the matter will be brought up at a community safety committee meeting later this month.
The last time this issue came up was in 2015. City staff recommended such a program, but council said no.
There were several concerns, including cost. At the time, the annual bill for the program was estimated at $650,000 for about 60 crossing guards. With inflation, along with the growth in Barrie, the cost would certainly be well over $1 million each year now.
I was on council at the time. No one was able to give me an answer to this simple question: Are there any studies to show crossing guards increase pedestrian safety?
You might say it’s common sense that crossing guards make pedestrians safer, but common sense in not scientific proof. Things we think are common sense are often not true.
It’s hard to find exact figures, but Ontario municipalities likely spend more than $50 million each year on crossing guards. Toronto alone budgets more than $25 million.
You’d think, with those kind of dollars going out the door at city hall year after year, there would be some hard data to show the money was spent wisely.
But there isn’t.
A search of the internet found exactly one study, interestingly enough, in Toronto. It looked at pedestrian motor vehicle collisions (PMVCs) at 58 locations, before and after a crossing guard program was implemented between 2003 and 2011.
It found: “PMVCs rates remained unchanged at guard locations after implementation.”
That’s right, crossing guards made no difference to the rate at which pedestrians were struck. It is only one study and a fairly small sample size, but that is certainly not the result you would expect.
The study also found that 62 per cent of PMVCs involving children took place outside of school travel times, including evenings, weekends and summer.
The report’s conclusion? “School crossing guards are a simple roadway modification to increase walking to school without apparent detrimental safety effects.”
In other words, there's no proof crossing guards made children safer, but they may help make parents feel their children are safer and perhaps encouraged more students to walk to school, which would be a good thing.
Unfortunately, a 2014 study in Miami cast doubt on even that assumption, finding “no change in the number of children walking or biking to and from school” after crossing guards were put in place in that Florida city.
The Toronto study’s other conclusion was that, “other more permanent interventions are necessary to address the frequency of child PMVCs occurring away from the location of crossing guards, and outside of school travel times.”
That’s exactly what Barrie councils have been doing. Over the past 20 years, school safety zones have been created on the streets around all elementary schools, lowering the speed limit and increasing fines to drivers committing any traffic offences. Traffic-calming devices, such as speed bumps, have been installed in many areas.
More than three dozen pedestrian signals have been put mid-block near school routes. Speed boards, showing drivers how fast they are going, are moved around various trouble spots.
Sidewalks on both sides are required near schools and on major streets in all new subdivisions.
The good thing about these measures is that they are proven to be effective and they work 24 hours a day, 52 weeks a year, not just when crossing guards are in place. And they protect everyone, including seniors who studies have shown are most at risk.
As for crossing guards? Unfortunately, nobody knows.
Barry Ward is a veteran editor and journalist who also served on Barrie city council for 22 years. Fair Comment appears regularly in BarrieToday.
