New attraction at Howe Community Park hopes to teach children rules of the road
As the summer travel season approaches, a new safe play park was unveiled Saturday at Howe Community Park in Arden Arcade.
Parents and children can visit the park to learn the rules of the road, California Office of Traffic Safety Director Stephanie Dougherty said. By walking or using a bicycle, visitors can drive a mock street with stop signs, two roundabouts, a railroad crossing, yield signs and crosswalks.
Howe Community Park’s new attraction is in the northeast corner of the park off Bell Street. It is blocked to prohibit vehicles from using the mock street.
The new safe play park aims to teach children the rules of the road early on, Dougherty said, who went on to say there’s typically an increase in traffic incidents involving young drivers during the summer months. Additionally, about 17% of those severely injured by traffic collisions in Sacramento County were 20 years old or younger.
“It’s never too early to start teaching your kids how to be safe when they travel,” Dougherty said.
Sacramento County Supervisor Rich Desmond, who represents Arden Arcade and other eastern suburbs, said the new space isn’t only for children, but for all area residents who might need to learn about traffic rules.
Howe Community Park, 2201 Cottage Way, is a good spot for the new safe play park, Desmond said, because it can also serve the large Afghan refugee population in Arden Arcade. More Afghan natives live in western and northern Arden Arcade, than in any other ZIP code in America, according to previous Sacramento Bee reporting.
“They don’t have the same kind of enforcement provisions (in Afghanistan),” Desmond said. “This is a great place for them to get exposed to that.”
When Fulton-El Camino Recreation and Park District Chair Teresa Higgins first heard about the safe play park proposal, she said, she knew it was something to be considered, even though it took parking away from the park. It’s not always a certainty that a project will come to fruition, but she said collaboration with Desmond’s office and Impact Teen Drivers, an organization focused on reducing traffic collisions, helped bring together the $60,000 attraction.
“Collaboration is huge,” Higgins said.
