Thursday’s headlines

17 comments

1. Ugh I’m sick of the SUN: “War on cars continues” I don’t even need to read that article to know what garbage its filled with.

2. If you *had* bothered to read the article you’re condemning, you would have discovered that City Council is considering fining any driver who drives over 40 km/hour anywhere in Toronto.

   Sounds like “war on cars” to me.

3. More like a war on pedestrian fatalities.

4. If you *had* bothered to read the article that you’re blatantly misrepresenting, you would have discovered that Councillor Saundercook is proposing that all of the city’s posted speed limits be reduced by 10 km/h with a bottom limit of 30 km/h.

5. James, the speed limit in Toronto, unless otherwise posted, is 50 km/hour. This law would reduce that to 40 km/hour.

   But you’re right, your description is more accurate. It also points our that zones currently marked 40 km/hour would also drop to 30 km/hour.

   Mark, you’re assuming that high speed limits cause greater pedestrian fatalities.

6. Montreal recently dropped speeds to 40kmh on all streets (though not arterials)

   MTL official points to statistical data saying its safer.

7. Diane, yes I assume that slowing cars down is safer (probably why there are speed limits in the first place). But you’re assuming that anything which seeks to make the city safer and ‘friendlier’ for pedestrians and cyclists is a ‘war on cars.’ A much bigger leap of logic! When cars are being blown up, held prisoner and/or tortured, then I’ll believe there’s a ‘war’ on cars.

8. Thanks for the link Mark. Do you by any chance have a link to the “statistical data” the MTL official alluded to?

9. I read the “York slams province over sprawl” on my way to work this morning and nearly fell out of my seat. It is a little rich for York Region, of all places, to be complaining that the province is facilitating low-density sprawl outside the designated urban area at the expense of designated high-density areas. Pot, kettle etc.

10. Most people drive 10 km/h over the speed limits anyway, so reducing them by 10 km/h would bring the real driving speeds down to what’s currently posted.

11. “When cars are being blown up, held prisoner and/or tortured, then I’ll believe there’s a ‘war’ on cars.”

    Didn’t have look far to find this one:

    “Province will ‘crush your car (and) the parts'”

    http://www.thestar.com/article/227763

12. Diane: I hope you were being cheeky, cuz that link doesn’t indicate a war on cars: its a war on stupidity. Street racing is for idiots. Most drivers even know that.

13. Here’s what I have a problem with…increasing fines for speeders or assessing them more demerit points is fine, if you’re NOT the guy/gal who just got run over.

    Why not reframe this into a bigger issue, “The War on Entitlement”? When the speed limit was set lo the many years ago, it probably made sense based on population density or current trends in city planning. Shouldn’t we be constantly re-evaluating thos decisions? Yes, we should. But drivers feel entitled to operate as they’ve always done, and thus the process is always long and difficult.

    There are areas where building public support for an issue is vital. Then there are issues like this where if you can find enough hard data (as it seems they did in Montreal) to say that the city can no longer support a 50km/h speed limit, then council should feel free to table the data and make the necessary change. End of story. On an issue like speed limits, anyone who tries to turn this into news (Toronto Sun, Councillor Holyday, Diane…) is just making hay. Who’s ever changed a speed limit maliciously to get at another interest group? No one, that’s who. It’s not a war, it’s a evolution of civic priorities in which flesh and bone is finally getting it’s due vs. glass and steel. How in the hell is that a bad thing?

14. Ugh I’m sick NOW: “Cycle of Conflict”, “Bike War or Class War?” I don’t even need to read those articles to know what garbage they are filled with.

15. The last time I drove in Toronto, I was driving so defensively (yielding to pedestrians on a Saturday night) that my car rarely attained the speed limit!

16. You can find some stats on fatality in this article (sorry – pdf only) by John LaPlante and Barbara McCann. There’s an interesting graph of vehicle speed versus injury and death (Figure 3 on page 26). With an impact at 65 km/hr, a pedestrian has an 85% chance of death, at 50 km/hr that goes down to 45%, and at 32 km/hr we’re down to 15%. Source is the “Guide to Recommended Pedestrian Safety Planning” published in 1989 by the US Federal Highway Administration. Seems to me like the wise thing to do in an area filled with pedestrians and cyclists is to reduce the speed limit as Saundercook suggests – if not on all streets, on the majority of downtown streets.

    I suppose, what has to be done on some level is for the city to make a risk analysis and determine where they want the balance between pedestrian fatality likelihood and driver delays to lie.

17. what about enforcing the rules that already exist? the downtown “major arterials” do not have a speed limit of 60 km/h, for example.