The University of Nevada, Reno is starting a new campaign to increase pedestrian safety. The move is in response to three incidents involving pedestrians and vehicles impacting the campus community in January.
The campaign aims to reduce the number of distracted pedestrians on campus by painting crosswalk corners bright red with the slogan, “Look up from your phone in the Red Zone.”
UNR’s police services and other student groups met at a crosswalk on campus to unveil the Red Zone campaign this week.
“We can be out here all day, every day, writing tickets, enforcing and not really see a difference that we’re making. So we were trying to figure out how’s a way that we can collaborate and make this a shared responsibility,” said Todd Renwick, the chief of police at UNR.
University police officers and volunteers will be using bull horns to call out distracted pedestrians. The emphasis of this campaign is on pedestrians, but Renwick said drivers need to be focused on the road as well.
“Law enforcement can’t solve this problem by themselves. We need us, as society, to be distraction-free. Until we get to that point, we are going to continue to see these trends,” said Renwick.
The campaign will continue until the end of the semester in May.
As a note of disclosure, the license to this station is owned by the Board of Regents for the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Jayden Perez is a junior studying at the Reynolds School of Journalism.