Montreal suburb piloting ‘reward light’ to slow traffic near school

(LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS/Adobe Stock)

A Montreal suburb is conducting a pilot project on pedestrian safety near a school, in partnership with Signalisation Kalitec.

The City of Brossard is testing the Educational Awareness Reward Light (EARL) for 90 days near Académie Marie-Laurier.

Signalisation Kalitec, a family-owned Quebec-based company and a designer and manufacturer of traffic signal products, said speed is one of the main causes of road accidents. According to some studies, a reduction in the average speed of traffic of 5 km/h would reduce the number of accidents by 15% annually, it said in a press release.

“This type of system has existed for about 10 years in Europe and was approved in August 2021 in France. Several countries use it, including France and Portugal, and the impacts are convincing. We are proud to be the first distributor of this technology in Canada. The pilot project with the City of Brossard will allow us to gather data and test its effectiveness,” said Anthony Lapointe, Signalisation Kalitec’s co-owner and sales director.

How it works

EARL detects the speed of the vehicle in real time and responds with a three-colour light. It displays a red light by default that turns green if the driver is at legal speed, the company said.

“Vehicles driving at illegal speeds in school zones is a problem that is not specific to Brossard; it is common all over Quebec. It is important to think of innovative solutions to curb this problem and save lives. Too many unfortunate events have occurred and future such events must be avoided. The pilot project with Signalisation Kalitec is promising and will allow us to study the educational awareness reward light in order to document its true effect on the respect of speed limits. We hope that many will follow our example,” said Doreen Assaad, mayor of Brossard.

The company said no excavation is required to install EARL, and it’s solar-powered. In addition to its preventive role, the company noted that EARL is a smart, connected traffic light that records statistics on the nature of targeted traffic, allowing it to measure its impact on motorist behaviour in real time, and it can be controlled remotely through its mobile application.