Road Safety & Vision Zero Plan

[H4F33Z]

It's late 2019... Can someone give an update of the Lawrence Ave. East bike lanes? even though I know it's definitely not done
Or the willowdale ave. one?
Or Vaughan Rd?
Or Conlins Rd. improvement?

 

[TransitBart]

Serious question. This topic is complex and the way the discussion is going it's always a driver's fault. But I witness pedestrian behavior everyday that is careless according to what I learned as a child. Kindergarten taught "Stop, look and listen before you cross the street."

On UT the expression ROW (Right of Way) is frequently used. Do pedestrians have a legal right to march off of sidewalks without looking today, or do they bear any responsibility at all for looking and verifying that the way is clear?

Example. I could probably kill one person a day driving home from work. When I get to my street, which is off a major street, if there are pedestrians walking close to the intersection (in the direction of traffic) where I want to turn right, perhaps one in ten will look back over their left shoulder to see if the way is clear before they march off of the sidewalk. None stop to let cars pass. Do pedestrians have a legal right to be anywhere - unaware - today - in a circumstance like this? Do they have any obligation to check that the way is clear?

In the earlier discussions this week, careless driving, drinking and driving and speeding are factors in deaths on major arterials. No excuses. It should be safe to cross the street if you are doing it legally

But gosh there are a lot of pedestrians who also seem to be tempting fate in a way that I was taught to avoid as a child. Add in that hoodies obscure peripheral vision,and headphones and earbuds mask the noise of traffic and it's a recipe for a continuous threat to safety on busy streets.

 

[CityStay]

Serious question. This topic is complex and the way the discussion is going it's always a driver's fault. But I witness pedestrian behavior everyday that is careless according to what I learned as a child. Kindergarten taught "Stop, look and listen before you cross the street."

On UT the expression ROW (Right of Way) is frequently used. Do pedestrians have a legal right to march off of sidewalks without looking today, or do they bear any responsibility at all for looking and verifying that the way is clear?

Example. I could probably kill one person a day driving home from work. When I get to my street, which is off a major street, if there are pedestrians walking close to the intersection (in the direction of traffic) where I want to turn right, perhaps one in ten will look back over their left shoulder to see if the way is clear before they march off of the sidewalk. None stop to let cars pass. Do pedestrians have a legal right to be anywhere - unaware - today - in a circumstance like this? Do they have any obligation to check that the way is clear?

In the earlier discussions this week, careless driving, drinking and driving and speeding are factors in deaths on major arterials. No excuses. It should be safe to cross the street if you are doing it legally

But gosh there are a lot of pedestrians who also seem to be tempting fate in a way that I was taught to avoid as a child. Add in that hoodies obscure peripheral vision,and headphones and earbuds mask the noise of traffic and it's a recipe for a continuous thread to safety on busy streets.

You're absolutely correct. Texting pedestrians are such idiots. Let's be reasonable. How can a driver be expected to avoid zombie pedestrians when they have to balance their coffee and drive thru breakfast sandwhich while their tunes are blaring and their significant other is trying to get through on the hands-free? And maybe while they're texting - but just while stopped, of course.

And being treated for shock after you've just murdered some idiot pedestrian - people think that's easy but it's not. It's a good 30 minutes before you're able drive home from that life-inconveniencing incident. Not to mention if the body made a dent - UGH! Insurance..

I don't even want to talk about the number of distracted drivers who've been killed by distracted pedestrians.. too traumatic.

 

[BurlOak]

Serious question. This topic is complex and the way the discussion is going it's always a driver's fault. But I witness pedestrian behavior everyday that is careless according to what I learned as a child. Kindergarten taught "Stop, look and listen before you cross the street."

At stop signs, the car has already entered the intersection before the pedestrian - who takes it in full stride without slowing down. I don't think they teach anything in Kindergarten anymore.
That said, the car is going slow enough that these types of incidents don't lead to the deaths.

In the earlier discussions this week, careless driving, drinking and driving and speeding are factors in deaths on major arterials. No excuses. It should be safe to cross the street if you are doing it legally

But gosh there are a lot of pedestrians who also seem to be tempting fate in a way that I was taught to avoid as a child. Add in that hoodies obscure peripheral vision,and headphones and earbuds mask the noise of traffic and it's a recipe for a continuous thread to safety on busy streets.

I am not sure if this is only a Toronto problem or a widespread problem. Have traffic deaths gone up in Ottawa, Kingston, London? How about Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton?

 

[TossYourJacket]

Obviously if we ban hoodies and headphones then all our problems will be solved! After all, only pedestrians can be distracted by music, because all drivers are so responsible they would never do something as crazy as listen to music in a car.

In all seriousness, yeah, pedestrians can do dumb things, but they also aren't the ones driving multi-tonne machines that are capable of killing someone on impact.

 

[ADRM]

It’s really frustrating that people continue to approach the road safety crisis like it’s some grand enigma. It is a fact that if drivers slowed down — as a result of any combination of policy interventions — fewer people would die. You are less likely to die if you are hit by an object that is being driven more slowly than by one being driven faster. We also know for a fact that paint and signage do very little to encourage drivers to slow down, so we need to undertake different solutions, and there are countless examples of ways to effectively do this, sadly none of which are being pursued in Toronto at scale.

All of those things are true even before undertaking an assessment of fault, so that should be table stakes even for the people who, for whatever reason, refuse to assume that pedestrians aren’t to blame for the lion’s share of the crisis.

But, wait, on the latter point, we also have facts. The Toronto Police’s *own data* — despite their entrenched pro-car bias — shows that vulnerable road users are not at fault in the majority of the incidents in which they are injured or killed.

And, for my part as a Toronto driver, this is completely unsurprising to me: I can honestly say that in my nearly two decades driving a car in Toronto, I have literally never seen any of the behaviour that other drivers suggest is routinely undertaken by pedestrians that somehow convinced them that drivers aren’t the biggest problem. No one has ever jumped in front of my car unexpectedly. No one has ever aimlessly wandered into the street. No one has ever ventured out into a crosswalk with head so buried in phone or AirPods or whatever the eff else people think it is these rogue death wish-toting pedestrians are doing.

Truly, the only close calls I’ve had with pedestrians when I’ve been behind the wheel have been my fault. I’m fine to own that because I recognize that there should be an incredibly high bar for responsibility when I’m behind the wheel of a car that weighs 3,000 pounds and can travel at a speed of up to 200km/h.

Too many people are dying on our streets, the biggest problem is drivers, and we know of the solutions but refuse to implement them at scale. It really should not be difficult to comprehend.

 

[WislaHD]

My whole attitude has been that we should not have a philosophy of victim-blaming - be it distracted pedestrians or distracted drivers.

If an accident occurs, the problem is the road, not the user. The road should be designed so that the user can't get into an accident. It is not rocket science, but applied planning and engineering practice seen in countries like The Netherlands.

 

[crs1026]

I would take the "just slow down" premise a little further - we need to simplify the roads, and the interaction between drivers and others.

Driving is an activity involving potentially lethal forces, yes - but it's also a cognitively complex activity that is performed in real time with the input-output cycle operating in miliseconds. Chess is just as complex, but there are more generous time limits, and we don't ask people to play chess in pouring rain. Hockey is just as fast and dangerous, but a shift only lasts a minute or so, and one can call time out. Bobsled tracks are better lit, and much shorter than most drivers’ trips - but no more complex.

Buying some reaction time by slowing drivers is helpful, and lowering impact forces when things go wrong makes eminent sense. But we have to do more to untangle the whole human factors of driving (and walking, and cycling) and how roads are built.

Road design over the last 100 years has progressively "pushed the envelope" on drivers' mental processing to make it possible to drive faster and under more harsh conditions. Bigger signs, brighter road markings, eased and banked curves....the whole intent has been to make cars able to go faster, reduce trip time, and increase auto throughput. That's not to say that there hasn't been some attention to pedestrians, but that attention has taken the back seat to road productivity.

One can vent a lot of outrage shaming people who are momentarily (or habitually, or wilfully) distracted, but that misses a big point.... much of the distraction is inherent, because the whole process asks ordinary people to exercise a very complicated and fast-moving task. It is inherently error prone.

I recently drove a freeway with signs that read "Had an accident? Move vehicles to the sides of the roads" . Ontario has similar. It says something when we are so acclimatised to accidents that we assume they are inevitable and erect signs to talk about them....if I am involved in an accident, worrying about keeping traffic moving is pretty far down my list of priorities. The whole point of the sign is to get you past being in shock.

There is also what I will unkindly call the "Jennifer Keesmatt faction" who think that we can rapidly reform our cities into some dense form that won't need cars. This is wildly unrealistic (but not a bad long term goal in itself). We are going to be relying on highways for a long time. And, we can't make roads totally unproductive in the process. We just need a different design model.

- Paul

 

[ShonTron]

I would take the "just slow down" premise a little further - we need to simplify the roads, and the interaction between drivers and others.

Driving is an activity involving potentially lethal forces, yes - but it's also a cognitively complex activity that is performed in real time with the input-output cycle operating in miliseconds. Chess is just as complex, but there are more generous time limits, and we don't ask people to play chess in pouring rain. Hockey is just as fast and dangerous, but a shift only lasts a minute or so, and one can call time out. Bobsled tracks are better lit, and much shorter than most drivers’ trips - but no more complex.

Buying some reaction time by slowing drivers is helpful, and lowering impact forces when things go wrong makes eminent sense. But we have to do more to untangle the whole human factors of driving (and walking, and cycling) and how roads are built.

Road design over the last 100 years has progressively "pushed the envelope" on drivers' mental processing to make it possible to drive faster and under more harsh conditions. Bigger signs, brighter road markings, eased and banked curves....the whole intent has been to make cars able to go faster, reduce trip time, and increase auto throughput. That's not to say that there hasn't been some attention to pedestrians, but that attention has taken the back seat to road productivity.

One can vent a lot of outrage shaming people who are momentarily (or habitually, or wilfully) distracted, but that misses a big point.... much of the distraction is inherent, because the whole process asks ordinary people to exercise a very complicated and fast-moving task. It is inherently error prone.

I recently drove a freeway with signs that read "Had an accident? Move vehicles to the sides of the roads" . Ontario has similar. It says something when we are so acclimatised to accidents that we assume they are inevitable and erect signs to talk about them....if I am involved in an accident, worrying about keeping traffic moving is pretty far down my list of priorities. The whole point of the sign is to get you past being in shock.

There is also what I will unkindly call the "Jennifer Keesmatt faction" who think that we can rapidly reform our cities into some dense form that won't need cars. This is wildly unrealistic (but not a bad long term goal in itself). We are going to be relying on highways for a long time. And, we can't make roads totally unproductive in the process. We just need a different design model.

- Paul

Yes. Our traffic lights used to be mounted directly to poles - without the bright yellow backings, not mounted over the roads. In Montreal, they're still done this way in central urban areas. It used to be that we designed our roads with less clutter, for lower speeds, and for more attentive motorists. We have decided that the same standards for rural highways (big yellow traffic lights, wide lanes, excessive road signage) must also apply on urban streets where smaller signs, less obtrusive traffic signals, and the expectation that traffic moves more slowly should apply.

 

[11th]

Obviously if we ban hoodies and headphones then all our problems will be solved! After all, only pedestrians can be distracted by music, because all drivers are so responsible they would never do something as crazy as listen to music in a car.

In all seriousness, yeah, pedestrians can do dumb things, but they also aren't the ones driving multi-tonne machines that are capable of killing someone on impact.

Something I have been thinking of - 1. Ships are usually given the priority at bridge crossings, and trains are given priority over cars at railway crossings.
2. Should train be slowed down to a speed that would not cause catastrophic damage to a vehicle if an accidental impact shall occur.
3. For on-street LRTs, what is the safe speed to minimize fatalities.
4. Reaction time is quicker for pedestrian (human), vs. human drivers. For the driver it involves an extra step to stop (even if that takes less than a second), and also because they are bringing a multi-tonne machine to a stop.

 

[salsa]

Now this is pathetic taken to the next level.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1211464991515258880

 

[crs1026]

Something I have been thinking of - 1. Ships are usually given the priority at bridge crossings, and trains are given priority over cars at railway crossings.
2. Should train be slowed down to a speed that would not cause catastrophic damage to a vehicle if an accidental impact shall occur.
3. For on-street LRTs, what is the safe speed to minimize fatalities.
4. Reaction time is quicker for pedestrian (human), vs. human drivers. For the driver it involves an extra step to stop (even if that takes less than a second), and also because they are bringing a multi-tonne machine to a stop.

You are talking apples vs oranges here. Trains and boats have speed limits and rights of way based on stopping distances rather than reaction time. And there are different assumptions about survivability. You can’t compare survivability of impact with train vs say SUV based only on weight(mass) or joules of energy. What kills or injures people in train-pedestrian collisions is different than what is lethal in car-pedestrian collisions.

The core issue is exclusion vs shared use. We would be happy letting cars travel at 100 km/h if there were appropriate barriers and distances separating walkways and roadways. Many train-related deaths involve pedestrians who deliberately ignore fencing and signage. Same at level crossings. There is no need to speed-restrict a train at a level crossing that has functioning crossing protection, because the signalling is assumed effective to clear the right of way. Gates and lights are virtual exclusion creators. Our design assumes that if the gates are working, it’s the pedestrian’s job to stay clear.

For auto vs pedestrian, we are trying to achieve the reverse. It’s the auto’s job to stay clear. We might be well advised to revisit the whole premise of “yield to pedestrians and proceed when the way is clear” at intersections. I wonder if countdown lights are more dangerous than we think, as they encourage motorists and pedestrians to take risks. Maybe there should be a cycle where each gets some period of exclusive use.

We have to revisit our design assumptions. Some just aren’t working as intended.

- Paul

 

[crs1026]

PS: The LRT is an interesting example because I would say an LRT row ought to be an ‘excluded zone’ when pedestrians have the onus to stay clear....the challenge being there ought to be enough crossing points to ensure walkers aren’t taken out of their way to cross.

I would like to see much more intensive installation of signalized pedestrian crosswalks especially on arterials.. Every crosswalk should have enforcement cameras, just like red lights. The missing factor would then be that pedestrians have to activate, and wait to verify that cars are stopping. I regularly see people who press the button and just assume drivers will stop, and enter the crosswalk. The law may be on their side, but it’s a good way to get hit. With cameras one could measure time distance and approach speed, and make more informed decisions about who should have done what.

- Paul

 

[Admiral Beez]

You're absolutely correct. Texting pedestrians are such idiots. Let's be reasonable. How can a driver be expected to avoid zombie pedestrians when they have to balance their coffee and drive thru breakfast sandwhich while their tunes are blaring and their significant other is trying to get through on the hands-free? And maybe while they're texting - but just while stopped, of course.

And being treated for shock after you've just murdered some idiot pedestrian - people think that's easy but it's not. It's a good 30 minutes before you're able drive home from that life-inconveniencing incident. Not to mention if the body made a dent - UGH! Insurance..

I don't even want to talk about the number of distracted drivers who've been killed by distracted pedestrians.. too traumatic.

The easiest way is to address this is to remove the expectation of pedestrian predictability and make it nearly always driver responsibility for pedestrian collisions. If you saw a child or maybe dog at the side of the road, you would slow down, and wait to see what it did, you have no expectation that the kid or dog won't walk into traffic. So, allow pedestrians to cross the road anywhere and make car drivers absolutely liable. That removes the "pedestrians are idiots" excuse. You'd have to drive like you might be criminally responsible for a vehicular death at any moment.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/article202672174.html

 

[tmlittle]

The easiest way is to address this is to remove the expectation of pedestrian predictability and make it nearly always driver responsibility for pedestrian collisions. If you saw a child or maybe dog at the side of the road, you would slow down, and wait to see what it did, you have no expectation that the kid or dog won't walk into traffic. So, allow pedestrians to cross the road anywhere and make car drivers absolutely liable. That removes the "pedestrians are idiots" excuse. You'd have to drive like you might be criminally responsible for a vehicular death at any moment.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/article202672174.html

I think the shared spaces/woonerf/etc theories are great in a peak urbanism kind of way. Certainly there's a tendency in North America to try to address problems with more rules rather than address underlying issues like design. But at the same time with the culture of absolute entitlement from North American drivers and a society that demands that people drive no matter how incompetent they are at it, rules might still be the main thing they respond to. Arguably you could have a built environment that eg makes them feel unsafe at higher speeds, but cynically, it seems most drivers respond to feeling unsafe on the road by buying a larger and more insulating vehicle, to externalize the danger to everyone around them instead.