{"id":54930,"date":"2016-05-13T16:30:46","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T20:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=54930"},"modified":"2016-05-13T16:10:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T20:10:43","slug":"don-mills-safety-village","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2016\/05\/13\/don-mills-safety-village\/","title":{"rendered":"The Don Mills Safety Village taught kids to drive"},"content":{"rendered":"

1962 was a rough year for kids. In the 12 months between January and December, 20 young people under the age of 14 were killed on Toronto’s streets, and more than 1,700\u00a0were injured in incidents involving\u00a0automobiles.<\/p>\n

Among those who lost their lives\u00a0was 4-year-old Patrick McNally, whose toboggan slid beneath the wheels of a truck in\u00a0Scarborough, four-year-old Perry Chung, who was struck and killed when he stepped out between\u00a0parked cars on Phoebe Street, and 9-year-old David Rankin, who was knocked from his bicycle against a concrete curb\u00a0in North York.<\/p>\n

October was the worst month for both adults and children. “We averaged more than one death every two days last October [1961,]” said Sgt. R. M. Johns of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Traffic Safety Bureau.\u00a0“People just don’t adjust to the early darkness in the fall,” he said.<\/p>\n

Johns\u00a0also\u00a0pinned\u00a0the deaths of three children in\u00a0October, 1961 on the parents’ failure to keep their kids off the streets.<\/p>\n

“Children aren’t careless\u2014they’re carefree,”\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"toronto
PSAs like this one appeared on public transit in Toronto in the 1940s. Image: City of Toronto Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As they had done in the past, local officials responded to the high number of deaths with public education campaigns.<\/p>\n

Inspired by a similar scheme in Detroit in 1946, Toronto mayor Robert Hood Saunders co-created the road safety drive\u00a0that invented\u00a0Elmer the Safety Elephant. The anthropomorphic cartoon pachyderm, designed by former Disney artist\u00a0Charles Thorson, first appeared in the Toronto Telegram newspaper in 1947 and was later\u00a0adopted by Toronto Police as a mascot.<\/p>\n

Fines for jaywalking\u2014failing to cross the street at designated\u00a0crosswalks, which were officially added to Toronto streets in 1958<\/a>\u2014were added to local bylaws, and features appeared in local newspapers advising motorists against\u00a0applying make-up in traffic and driving with dirty headlights.<\/p>\n

Advertisements posted in\u00a0TTC streetcars and subway reminded parents to not let their kids play out in the street, but\u00a0in 1963, Toronto cops hit on a really unusual idea\u2014put kids behind the wheel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"toronto
The Don Mills Safety Village put young kids behind the wheel to illustrate how drivers saw the road. Image: Globe and Mail, May 2, 1963.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Plans for the\u00a0Don Mills Safety Village were revealed to the public in February, 1963. A\u00a0$5,000 model town was to\u00a0be built in the parking lot of the Don Mills shopping centre. It would include miniature plywood\u00a0buildings, realistic streets with functioning traffic lights, and little battery-powered cars.<\/p>\n

When it opened a few months later, the village consisted of five streets, two houses, eight stores, a service station, bank, schoolhouse, and church. The electric cars were replaced with pedal-powered alternatives, perhaps as a cost saving measure, but no expense was spared on the design of the roads.<\/p>\n

The 780 square metre\u00a0site\u2014touted as the only one of its kind in the country\u2014had functioning crosswalks, stop signs, and almost 200 metres of painted yellow and white roadway.<\/p>\n

“No one expects a child to understand all the intricacies of traffic problems,” said Inspector Charles Pearsall from the Metropolitan Police traffic safety bureau. “But the age they learn to walk is the age they should be getting acquainted with the basic safety rules.”<\/p>\n

Kids were taught how to understand basic crossing signals and react in potentially dangerous circumstances. If a\u00a0ball rolled into the street, for example, officers told the youngsters not to run\u00a0out after it. The curriculum also included advice on how to safely\u00a0wait\u00a0for and board the school bus.<\/p>\n

Putting kids at the controls of a\u00a0pedal car was supposed to illustrate how adult drivers see the street.\u00a0Photos published in the Toronto Star<\/em> and Globe and Mail<\/em> show youngsters lined up in traffic at a red light, navigating turns under guidance, and learning to follow hand signals at intersections while their mothers\u00a0stood\u00a0like giants on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

At the end of the hour-long\u00a0instruction, each of the children received a report card with a rating and notes for the parents on how to improve their child’s knowledge of the street.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the efforts of the police didn’t immediately decrease the number of road deaths.<\/p>\n

The Globe and Mail<\/em>, which kept track of traffic fatalities\u00a0throughout the year, put the final toll at 113\u2014a new record by a hair. Ironically, the last\u00a0death of 1963 was caused by a police cruiser.<\/p>\n

51-year-old restauranteur Aaron Borkwitz was struck and killed near King and Spadina by a police officer\u00a0returning to Scarborough after collecting a breathalyzer kit from downtown.<\/p>\n

Numbers gathered since the amalgamated Toronto police forces combined their\u00a0data\u00a0in 1957 showed there had been no significant increase or decrease in the number of road deaths, though the number of lives lost\u00a0compared to the number of vehicles\u00a0did fall.<\/p>\n

In 1957, 2.7 people were killed for every 10,000 vehicles on Toronto’s streets. By\u00a01963, that number had dropped\u00a0to 1.8 deaths for every 10,000 vehicles.<\/p>\n

In\u00a02015, 64 people\u201438 of them pedestrians\u2014were killed on Toronto’s streets.<\/p>\n

The numbers are currently at a five-year high<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1962 was a rough year for kids. In the 12 months between January and December, 20 young people under the age of 14 were killed on Toronto’s streets, and more than 1,700\u00a0were injured in incidents involving\u00a0automobiles. Among those who lost their lives\u00a0was 4-year-old Patrick McNally, whose toboggan slid beneath the wheels of a truck in\u00a0Scarborough,Continue reading “The Don Mills Safety Village taught kids to drive”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8234,"featured_media":54969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[69,24,14,32,9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-curiosities","category-history","category-spacing","category-streetscape","category-traffic","category-transit"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Don Mills Safety Village taught kids to drive - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2016\/05\/13\/don-mills-safety-village\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Don Mills Safety Village taught kids to drive - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"1962 was a rough year for kids. In the 12 months between January and December, 20 young people under the age of 14 were killed on Toronto’s streets, and more than 1,700\u00a0were injured in incidents involving\u00a0automobiles. 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