News Roads

Think our roads aren’t scary? Get out of your truck and go for a walk

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Our obsession with too-large vehicles is making our streets more and more dangerous each year

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When Durham Regional Police tweeted on July 21 of this year that a resident of Clarington had taken the matter of lowering speed limits into their own hands by stickering over the original 80 with a 50, people made light of it. Our own writer noted the sign bandit would better spend their time lobbying for lower limits instead of physically altering the existing speed sign.

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It’s obviously not much of a solution, but I found myself identifying with the exasperation as well as the sentiment. Our roads are not safe for anyone not ensconced in a vehicle, and that vehicle is increasingly becoming bigger and higher and more deadly to anyone outside of it.

It doesn’t matter how many articles that Ior my colleagues write about the ridiculous sizes of pickups and SUVs. The numbers are clear that the majority of new vehicle buyers want the largest things they can find, after being convinced by advertising departments that they need them, and being jammed into ridiculously long loan terms to acquire them. Too many are buying vehicles they don’t need with money they don’t have. I’d love to say ’twas ever thus, but it wasn’t. People used to do four- or five-year loan terms, and rolling over negative equity would have been cause for embarrassment, not celebration.

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The same sense of entitlement (and no, I’m not picking on people who need pickup trucks for their jobs) is leeching over into how we drive, as well as what we pilot. Aggressive driving and street racing and stunt driving charges are all up in Ontario, as well as many other places. Studies find more than half of drivers admit to such actions, and police report huge surges in charges. The provincial government recently toughened existing laws, and Toronto continues to doggedly adhere to some version of Vision Zero to attempt to save the most vulnerable.

Road fatalities for pedestrians and cyclists in Toronto are captured in this ten-year snapshot; from 2011 (20), 2012 (27), 2013 (44), 2014 (34), 2015 (42), 2016 (45), 2017 (41), 2018 (44), 2019 (39) to 2020, when a pandemic held it to 25. There are fluctuations, but too many pedestrians and cyclists continue to die on our streets. They’re people, not numbers. And those injured are barely given a second thought though many live with life-altering consequences.

Back to the altered speed sign: “The same guy who did this probably supports 20 km/h in school zones, ‘for the sake of the children.’ It hurts to know that such people exist. Roads are for CARS – not bikes, not pedestrians, CARS,” read a comment on the post. Protecting children has to be in quotes, apparently. Like it’s a joke. 

A thread on Twitter by Dr. John David Neary, an associate Professor of Medicine at McMaster University, caught my eye. He lives in Hamilton, is a car owner but also a cyclist and Dad. His thread started off like this:

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He then went on to run down a number of important points:

  • Moreover, these policies consistently privilege the interests and convenience of people in motor vehicles (i.e. people who are actively creating a risk of harm to others) over people who are not.
  • If you are going to take children in your own vehicle, you are responsible for following a long list of regulations designed to reduce their risk of dying in an MVC.
  • They have to wear seatbelts, and depending on age and size they have to sit in the back on booster seats. All new vehicles have airbags.
  • By contrast, we are almost completely indifferent to the risk that same vehicle imposes on people around it.
  • You can have tinted windows and a bull bar, and you can jack your tank-sized people mover up so high that you can’t even see if a child is walking in front of it. Society shrugs at this.
  • And if you have children who aren’t in a motor vehicle, the responsibility for avoiding their violent death at the hands of others is placed entirely on you (and your children).
  • Child road traffic deaths are only as rare as they are because of the extreme lengths to which we have gone as a society to restrict our children’s movement in order to protect them from#carownervirus.
  • The definitive account of how automobiles took over North American streets (which had previously been shared spaces), despite widespread opposition, is “Fighting Traffic” by Peter Norton. Lots of lessons for our time.

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I called Neary. He is one voice of many calling for safer spaces not just for his kids, but for all vulnerable road users. He doesn’t blame manufacturers so much as he does the lack of regulation by governments on the acceptable risk of bodily harm.

“The height and design of front grilles and bumpers on so many of these vehicles mean that even as an adult, you’re more likely to be thrown under the wheels versus onto the hood — like you would if you got hit by a Civic,” he said. Tax the beasts based on size, he offers as a solution. “Regulate the amount of harm caused by a deliberately dangerous vehicle.”

As for vigilante traffic-calmers? Sure, they should go through the proper channels. In Toronto, the process goes like this:

  • Project initiation (a Petition and Meeting Request)
  • Consideration of area-wide impacts
  • Basic road safety/design review
  • Consultation with emergency services and TTC staff
  • Traffic study and technical evaluation
  • Consideration of options
  • Report to Community Council
  • If traffic calming is technically supportable, the report will seek to
    • authorize a poll (though polling can be waived by Community Council)
    • authorize the road alteration bylaw

Not the simplest or quickest fix. And we wonder why people get frustrated enough to try something different.

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