By admin 
As students return to classrooms across the capital region and the state, California traffic safety officials are launching a two-week campaign urging drivers to slow down and watch for children and bicyclists near schools.
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The California Office of Traffic Safety campaign will use English- and Spanish-language ads to promote the “ABCs of safety” — being Alert for Bicyclists and Children crossing. The ads will appear primarily on Meta-owned social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook and air on radio stations throughout the state, OTS Deputy Director Tim Weisberg said.
“Our audience for this campaign is just anyone who’s out on the road… We all are travelers, and we need to look out for one another,” OTS Director Stephanie Dougherty said during a Monday news conference in Sacramento announcing the educational campaign.
Information will also be posted on the agency’s website and shared through its social media accounts, Dougherty said. Although the paid ads will end in September, the agency also created a toolkit of educational materials that other organizations can use to continue promoting the safety message.
The campaign cost about $120,000, Weisberg said.
Through the campaign, the agency wants to encourage drivers to “please allow extra time at pickup and drop off. Please stop for school buses. Slow down. Follow the speed limit. Look out for others on the road, avoid distractions and always focus on your driving,” Dougherty said.
Dougherty emphasized the importance of improving road safety through multiple approaches, including education, enforcement and infrastructure changes. Representatives from the Sacramento Police Department, Caltrans, California Highway Patrol, city of Sacramento, Sacramento City Council and nonprofit Slow Down Sacramento attended Monday’s news conference in North Sacramento’s Hagginwood neighborhood.
The event was held near a recently completed “quick-build” traffic safety project on Marysville Boulevard, where Sacramento has used lower-cost, temporary improvements while pursuing funding for a permanent project.
Supervising Engineer Phil Vulliet said the city pursued the interim improvements “to deliver meaningful changes sooner.” Using paint, signs and plastic bollards, the city reduced a section of the road from four lanes to two, added protected bike lanes and improved crosswalk markings.
The changes are intended to slow traffic and reduce the likelihood that a driver’s mistake will result in a fatal crash. But Vulliet said infrastructure alone cannot prevent dangerous driving.
“My job is literally to change human behavior with paint and plastic,” Vulliet said. “It is an incremental change but if somebody’s dead set on running a light, running a stop sign or speeding, it’s a little bit tough to do much about that without enforcement.”
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Sacramento police and CHP officers will patrol near schools for speeding, violations of school bus traffic laws and other offenses. OTS provided additional funding to the agencies for the increased enforcement.
OTS will measure the campaign’s reach through social media engagement and track participating law enforcement agencies’ efforts in school zones, Weisberg said.
Slow Down Sacramento founder Isaac Gonzalez raised concerns about the pace of some city traffic safety projects, including planned improvements to Folsom Boulevard. The project received $5 million in state funds were set aside in late 2022, but construction has not begun.
The roadway was the site of a crash that killed Guadalupe Jimenez, a 45-year-old mother, in early 2022.
“We need to hopefully act with more urgency on these,” said Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty, who announced the state funding for the project when he was serving in the Assembly. “A lot of times we don’t have the money to do it, but on that one, we actually got the money … Just it takes way too long to bring these projects to fruition.”
“That’s been one of my great frustrations that I’ve witnessed firsthand as mayor,” said McCarty, who became mayor in December 2024.
While infrastructure is important to improving traffic safety, it is only one part of the solution, according to Gonzalez, who also serves on the city’s Active Transportation Commission.
“These people are trying as hard as they can to fix our roads with limited resources,” Gonzalez said, referring to the advocacy groups at the Hagginwood news conference. “We need your help every day to do your best until we fix everything here. Please slow down.”
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