January 21st, 2010
As pedestrians deaths have mounted on a daily basis over the past week in the GTA (10 in the past 8 days), I’ve been asked more and more often what is going on, and if there can be some kind of explanation.
There are lots of explanations for why pedestrians get killed by vehicles (I’ve offered up some myself), but most of these explanations are true year-round or at least for the entire winter season. They can’t explain this sudden rash of fatalities in 8 days.
A minor element might be media focus — the phenomenon where one sees what one is looking for. The unsual and probably random fact that three pedestrians were killed in one day last Tuesday (Jan. 12), including one particularly heart-rending story of a mother killed while pushing her baby in a stroller, focused media attention on the issue, so each new fatality received more attention than the two-sentence paragraph in the Star pedestrian fatalities normally receive.
But the number of deaths in such a short span of time, and their consistency (pretty much one or more a day) is still freakish and extremely unusual. It seems to be worth trying to figure out if there’s anything that could at least partially explain it.
There can be no definitive explanation, but there is one factor that could conceivably have been a tipping point in some of these deaths — something that might have turned the near-misses and minor injuries that happen to pedestrians every day into a few terrible accidents over the past week.
December 4th, 2009
While I was in Ottawa two weeks ago for the launch of our Spacing Ottawa blog I spent some time wandering around the Hintonburg neighbourhood (the site of our launch party and where …
August 21st, 2009
The storms that rocked Toronto yesterday were wild. I rushed home from the Spacing office to avoid getting drenched and arrived just in time to take a series of photos of the approahcing menace. The following images were taken …
August 13th, 2009
Toronto Lightning Storm from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo.
Spacing photo contributor Sam Javanrouh captured a recent lightning storm in a …
July 30th, 2009
Anonymous garbage bags with disgusting refuse appear with subtlety, as deft fingers disentangle when nobody is looking, but the street scape survives.
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January 26th, 2009
Toronto is once again having a snowy winter, and the City’s Coldest Day of the Year Ride for cyclists is coming up this Friday (January 30). With these things in mind, here are some …
December 17th, 2008
When I got to Queen Street West around Spadina on my way to work this morning, I discovered a pleasant surprise – a long stretch of the sidewalk had been ploughed, by a machine, by the city. Wonder …
December 10th, 2008
As Torontonians negotiated snowy and icy sidewalks this past week, some were no doubt reminded of the problems the city had last winter with clearing sidewalks. One of them was the Toronto Star’s entertainment columnist Antonia Zerbisias, who …
August 14th, 2008
In the last 1/2 hour I’ve been getting texts and reading Twitters about the “sunset of the century.” Something about a storm and the sunset — but I can’t see it from here in Cabbagetown due to the trees (extra thick due to all those storms). The above and below photos are by Michele Perras (who coined “Thunderdusk” on her Flickr page). If you’ve got a photo post it in the comment section — if you have a 500 pixel wide version and know the html code, do the link. If you simply post the link to the photo and it fits our template (500 wide), we’ll adjust and post the pic later this evening. Finally some beautiful fire in the sky that isn’t propane fueled.
June 6th, 2008
Last night was a humid night, and the sky was literally electric. For nearly two hours, hardly any rain fell but lightning struck often. I was able to set up my tridpod on the balcony …
