What is it going to take to make public service safe?

(CBC) - Val Montgomery was traveling four kilometers under the speed limit New Year's Eve when she was pulled over and given a speeding ticket for $632.

The trouble was that Montgomery, driving from Canmore to Calgary, had passed an unmarked RCMP cruiser, which had pulled over another driver and had its emergency lights flashing.

And that meant her 106 km/h was almost double the speed limit for passing an emergency worker, new legislation that came into effect at the end of October.

"It was devastating. I mean, $632, I was shocked. I was absolutely shocked," Montgomery said.

The new rules introduced by the province allows for fines double that of other speeding offences if the driver is traveling faster than 60 km/h in a construction zone, or when passing emergency vehicles or tow truck with lights flashing.

Cpl. Dave Hardy, with the Airdrie RCMP, says the law has been in effect for more than two months and any grace period where warnings were handed out is over.

"I really do hope the education gets out there and there's some sort of change in the driving habits and people aren't purposely ignoring the regulations or if they don't know about it," Hardy said. "Because, as I said, the grace period is coming to an end.

"And the tickets are going to be very high."

He adds that a media blitz was launched when the legislation, intended to reduce the number of emergency and construction workers injured, came into effect.

Montgomery says more should have been done to inform the public - especially about what constitutes an emergency vehicle.

"It just floored me. This was an incident where you pass a police car that had pulled a car over for speeding," she said. "It didn't even occur to me that would have been an emergency vehicle.

"An emergency vehicle to me is, you know, the scene of an accident or police marked cars with lights flashing, ambulance vehicles, all those types of vehicles."

Hardy says any police car, fire truck or ambulance is considered an emergency vehicle.

"Stopping a vehicle for speeding is a common thing on our highways, or any traffic violation, and those are the incidents where our officers need to be protected," he said.

The province says it will post signs at the border and in construction zones to remind drivers to slow down.