The results of the Police control campaign focusing on pedestrian crossings indicate that many drivers of vehicles do not pay enough attention, nor understand or show the prescribed special caution when approaching pedestrian crossings.
- Several drivers failed to provide unhindered passage to pedestrians and drove ahead without stopping, passing another vehicle that had stopped in front of the pedestrian crossing, Chief Superintendent Heikki Kallio of the National Police Board comments on the recent campaign.
The two-week thematic controls, with the aim of improving the safety of vulnerable road users, paid intensified attention on the safety of pedestrian crossings, especially the way how the statutory rules were followed.
During the control weeks, 589 sanctions were imposed on motorised vehicle drivers for various degrees of failures to abide by the pedestrian crossing rules.
Car drivers fined for not providing unhindered passage
The control was mainly targeted at drivers of vehicles and their traffic behaviour at pedestrian crossings.
According to Chief Superintendent Kallio, the Police had to intervene with the behaviour of all road user groups.
Most sanctions were issued to drivers of motorised vehicles for failing to give unhindered passage to pedestrians. The number was 331. The second most frequent violation, the so-called guillotine, resulted in 111 sanctions. The term refers to driving past the pedestrian crossing, despite another vehicle has stopped in front of it.
In addition, car drivers got the total of 141 traffic penalty fees and fines for other violations of the pedestrian crossing rules.
A tram driver was also fined
A Helsinki tram approached with rather a high speed the tram stop with pedestrians on the adjacent crossing which is not controlled with traffic lights. The tram driver did not slow down nor give free passage to the pedestrians but instead, sounded the tram horn so that the pedestrians had to give way to the tram. As a consequence, the tram driver was fined.
Cyclists and drivers of light electric vehicles got 188 cautions and 65 traffic penalty fees for failures to observe the pedestrian crossing rules. Sixty-eight pedestrians failing to respect the red light were imposed the traffic penalty fee or a caution.
A parking ticket was written 53 times, mainly for parking too close to the pedestrian crossing.
