Cynthia Campbell's son goes to the Summit School, which is attended by children with special needs. Each school day, a special bus arrives and picks him up outside the family's front door, on the opposite side of Clarke Avenue from École St. Léon.

"You would think that waiting for the school bus in front of your house would be relatively safe, except for the myriad of parents who decide they would like to execute a U-turn," she said.

This was the second time recently, according to Campbell, that a parent driving children to the school made such a maneouvre, nearly hitting her son on the sidewalk. Following the most recent incident last week, her husband irately walked up to the vehicle, banged on the windshield and told the driver to wake up.

"The driver is assuming that if he goes up on the sidewalk, that child will know enough to move. But, in fact, isn't that supposed to be a safety zone?" According to the province's highway code, it is a breach of the law to drive a vehicle onto the sidewalk.

Campbell said she called Westmount Public Security, only to be told they could do nothing because the department has no authority to deal with moving violations committed by motorists. They advised her to call the police.

Despite leaving a message at the Montreal Police's Station 12 for the traffic control officer, she says she waited 10 days without getting a response. However, in the meantime, Campbell maintains she was seeing more parents from École St. Léon mounting the curb after making U-turns.

She decided to approach one of the drivers to warn him, "at which point he began screaming and yelling at me, at which point I began screaming and yelling at him." After fetching her camera-equipped cell phone to photograph the vehicle's license, Campbell claims the situation "came to, I would say, nearly fisticuffs."

Constable Steven Goldberg, whose beat as traffic officer at Station 12 includes not only the City of Westmount but also a large tract of territory downtown, said the police have been conducting back-to-school traffic safety campaigns this year, as they also will be in 2009, but he would not elaborate. While acknowledging that he met Campbell to discuss her complaint, Goldberg said he could not discuss the details.

Photo: Martin C. Barry