I was on CBC Radio 1’s Metro Morning this morning to talk about the spate of 9 pedestrians hit by cars in 45 minutes on Monday morning.
The spate was not all that surprising. Late November and early December are when collisions of cars and pedestrians are most common, as this excellent chart by Patrick Cain of Global News shows. The reason is pretty clear — it’s the time of the year when much of rush hour happens in darkness (all of Monday’s collisions happened before sunrise), but drivers and pedestrians have not yet adapted their habitual behaviours to compensate. Anecdotally, these concentrations of collisions also seem to happen more during overcast weather, which presumably accentuates the lack of light during dawn and twilight, and may reduce constrast.
As host Matt Galloway pointed out, many drivers and pedestrians habitually engage in dangerous behaviour. They are usually able to correct for danger at the last second, however. But at this time of year, that last second gets lost thanks to poor visibility, and an increase in collisions is the result.
Can the City government do anything to reduce this yearly spike in collisions? I can think of a couple of things. First is a state of good repair. One of the primary signals to drivers to watch out for pedestrians are the painted white lines at crossing points. These tend to be poorly maintained and often end up severely faded. If before November comes around these were repainted, and burned-out street lamps replaced, it could make that split-second difference to visibility.
A related issue is the zebra-stripe style painted crosswalks at signalized intersections. They’ve been introduced because a pilot project demonstrated they reduced vehicle-pedestrian conflict, presumably by giving a stronger signal to drivers to look out for pedestrians. After the spate of 14 pedestrian deaths in the GTA in January 2010, the first batch were rolled out to major and dangerous intersections. But for the rest of Toronto’s intersections, they are only being painted on when the road is repaved (which means it will take 20 years or so to finish the task). Rolling them out faster could help.
Another measure the City could take would be a safety campaign at the beginning of November each year — one directed at all users of the road, not just at pedestrians. It could remind everyone — drivers, pedestrians and cyclists — that visibility is being reduced and that everyone should take an extra second to look out before proceeding. The police do undertake a safety campaign each year in November to raise awareness, but since they tend to frame it as a crackdown on pedestrians, and police by their nature focus on enforcement, the overall message to all road users gets lost (pedestrians get annoyed, and drivers don’t pay attention). A City campaign could get away from the blame game and be directed at all road users equally — and maybe save a few injuries and even deaths in the process.
photo by Sean Marshall
7 comments
Wow, so smart and reasonable. Great suggestions! Glad I came over here from the pedestrian blood bath going on in the comments section to Christopher Hume’s column.
Hume says there are 7 pedestrian injuries every day. Is anyone studying the causes of these accidents? My guesses: rights on reds and cross walks. But I could be wrong. Rather than us all guessing, I hope someone is looking at the facts. Let’s learn from these unfortunate events.
LC – the city did a study of pedestrian collisions a few years ago. It’s kind of flawed, but it does look into the causes. Right turns are definitely a big one. PXOs are, perhaps surprisingly, not such a big cause.
http://www.toronto.ca/transportation/walking/pdf/ped_collision_study-full_report.pdf
I know a rural town that has a busy downtown. After a downtown make-over they installed *pedestrian crossways* with the sign ” motorists, yield to pedestrians” – after several collisions I noticed the signs changed one day, “pedestrians, wait for a break in traffic”
no, really.
re: streetlights — Toronto Hydro generally replaces streetlights reactively, not proactively. In other words, you have to report it on their web site (or by phone) — they don’t go out looking for streetlights to replace, or automatically replace them after a certain period of time. (I have probably reported at least 100 in my neighbourhood since the end of the summer, and have reported at least 200 per year over the past couple of years — I take a pen and paper with me when I’m walking the dog at night.)
It would be nice if they would do this proactively, or at least send a crew out after dark to make an inventory of streetlights to be replaced during the day. But even in the absence of this, anyone can report streetlight outages.
That’s an interesting study, and if you add the corresponding numbers up it looks like as many pedestrians are hit by turning cars while crossing with the light at intersections as are hit crossing mid block (22%). The study authors don’t aggregate left and right turns, so they think that mid-block collisions are the most common type.
When you add in the 5% who’re hit while crossing with the light by cars going straight through, it looks like you’re slightly more likely to dodge the cars mid block.
Implement no right-on-reds at busy intersections and give pedestrians a head start to cross the street by delaying the green light for cars. Too often a car tries to make his right turn before pedestrians cross the street.
Montreal has no rights on reds on the entire island and it has an incredible effect on making pedestrians feel safe and overall calming of car traffic. This is despite the drivers being much more aggressive there.
I hope people read Hume’s good column today, and contrast it with this, as it seems kinda weak in the basics of pedestrians should be entitled to safety, and it is the cars, (and bikes too, yes) that are the ones needing constraining.
It’s not the pedestrian and bike traffic that wears out the road markings – it is the motorized traffic. And so why isn’t it all being replaced far sooner and more often? If it’s money, then why did the Vehicle Registration Tax money disappear? Surely the War from the Car is obvious now.
And there’s a degree of incompetence in play as well. Somehow, the City hasn’t put a crosswalk down on Dundas St. W. crossing over Sterling Rd. where Ms. Morrison was killed. How hard is that to do? How costly?