I wasn’t going to comment on this one – there’s been more than enough commentary on the issue over on Facebook – but I’ll add these three points:
- I’m very confident that the vast majority of Stittsville residents are ok with kids playing road hockey on neighbourhood streets.
- What does it say about drivers and road safety when parents don’t think it’s safe to play road hockey without extra signage in place?
Yes, road hockey may technically be against the law in #Ottawa, but some bylaws are meant to be challenged. (See also: Uber.)
UPDATE: It turns out that road hockey is in fact not against the law in Ottawa. Back in 2007, City council approved an exception to allow for ball hockey on streets and hopscotch on sidewalks.
There is a big difference between the video and the image. In the video they are playing in a long stretch of straight road. They can see cars coming and the drivers can see them. The image shows a short stretch between an intersection and a bend in the road. Not only can the children not see approaching cars well in advance, the drivers can’t see the children either.
I would never have allowed my children to play in the street in an area like this. It also never would have occurred to me to inconvenience my neighbours by blocking the road.
In this situation, in the absence of good judgement by the parents, I think the bylaw should be enforced.
The neighbours were fine with it. As far as I understand, it wasn’t a neighbour who complained. Don’t you think the people who put the pylons up, spoke to then neighbours within that area? People shouldn’t be driving so fast that they could not see kids playing around that curve. The problem is, people are ignorant and drive well above the posted limit within Stittsville. We have friends in Jackson Trails, and speeding is a big problem. Our kids go to the school there as well, and I’ve witnessed numerous idiots driving through the school zone at a high rate of speed. So the solution is to keep people off the road? Or perhaps the solution is to penalize the moron drivers.
Actually Bill, I live on Denali Way and the people who put the pylons up did not ask the neighbours outside of the pylons and refused to let most cars through and had the kids tell the cars to go around. I even witnessed walkers turning around and not even bothering to continue on. So bylaw was called but by the time they came the pylons were put away.
Thank you Betty, this is the issue and the kids that i saw were 5 and under with no parent by the street but up a garage door having a conservation, there was a car at the end of the driveway and the little ones were running back and forth in the street and up the driveway. when i got turned around to stop and take a photo they were at the garage door. The 1 pylon pic was mine and i did see the one on Denali Way…If you enlarge the photo you will see them there at the time I took the pic…
Thanks for all the comments so far. One of our StittsvilleCentral.ca reporters tried to reach the resident who put up the orange cones, but they didn’t want to speak to the media.