City of Iqaluit road crews should use more warning signs

Safety for workers and citizens seems not important to the City of Iqaluit.

I’m sure I’m not the only motorist in Iqaluit that has noticed this and said in my head “only in Iqaluit.”

But it’s time this ends before someone gets killed.

The City of Iqaluit never uses flag men (the guys with the stop signs that hold traffic) when they are conducting road maintenance, repair, utilidor maintenance, or any other job that blocks the road or lanes of traffic, even when the work is being conducted on blind corners or on top of hills.

And the only sign I’ve ever seen is a small, dingy, paint chipped sign that says something like “slow down.”

This leaves it up to the motorist to use their own judgement and skills (skills that many drivers in Iqaluit don’t have) to manoeuvre around loaders, trucks, workers and other traffic.

Pretty much all the private companies in town who do work that sometimes may block traffic utilize flag men, or at the very least proper signage that will give their workers a safer environment to work in and Iqaluit’s motorists and pedestrians a better understanding of what’s going on.

Road maintenance will always be needed, and it will always frustrate people when they have to wait in line to pass the job site. This will never change.

But I would much rather be frustrated with waiting in line than be crushed by a loader, hit by a car or try to sleep at night after I ran over a city employee just trying to do their job with what little resources his employer gives him.

(Name withheld by request)
Iqaluit


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