No injuries after car crashes into busy Kitchener playground

People at a crowded Kitchener park are shocked no one was injured after a car left the roadway and collided with a play structure.

It happened on Wednesday afternoon, when a blue Honda Civic sedan drove into the base of the playground equipment.

Waterloo regional police say there were no injuries as a result of the crash and a 34-year-old Whitby man has been charged with careless driving and failing to surrender his licence.

“I was just there with my son and I saw a car – boom – hit,” witness Steven Bell told CTV News. “I didn't see anything, hear anything, until the last minute.”

Bell was steps away from where the crash happened just after 5 p.m. at the Southwest Optimist Sports Field in Kitchener, at the intersection of Homer Watson Boulevard and Pioneer Drive.

The park was full of families enjoying the sunshine when, the car reportedly hopped the curb from the nearby plaza. The vehicle drove on the grass and over a basketball court, narrowly missing several children playing there, before colliding with a play structure.

Bell said, after witnessing a similar crash at the park a few months ago, he has no plans to come back.

“The God’s honest truth, I will not come back here until they put barriers up or until they change something,” he said. “Because kids could get killed – not just one. He could have took out three kids before he would've stopped, right? So I'm not bringing my kids, I'll go to another park.”

The playground at Southwest Optimist Sports Field in Kitchener as seen on April 21, the day after the collision. (Colton Wiens/CTV Kitchener)

Resident Adam Suljovic said he was at the park in September when a van narrowly missed kids and parents before hitting a tree and a post.

He said he's called the City of Kitchener to install stones seen elsewhere in the park as a barrier between the kids playing and the traffic on the road.

"These are kids," said Suljovic. "I want to advocate for them. They don't have a voice. We're their voice."

"I just want something done where we can protect the area where the kids are playing and be able to sleep at night knowing that we did something."

The City of Kitchener recently implemented a Vision Zero strategy meant to improve street safety for all users and achieve zero serious injuries and fatalities. The strategy report for 2022-2025 shows the city is seeing more than 200 injury collisions every year.

Bent metal at the base of the play structure shows where the car collided with it. (Colton Wiens/CTV Kitchener)