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Road Safety & Vision Zero Plan

crs1026 said:
These events are tragedies. I never said otherwise. My point being, let’s hear what happened before we villainize any one or anything.
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The system should be designed that the mistakes and oversights of pedestrians and cyclists shouldn’t be fatal. Unless someone is suicidal, a pedestrian or cyclist has entered the road space with the intent to either use or cross that space. Curb jumping vehicles aside, this is the genesis of all these pedestrian and cyclist deaths. We need to stop forcing the pedestrians and cyclists to meet the practices and rules of the car driver. Instead, find out what the pedestrians or cyclists were doing when they were struck by the cars and make whatever and wherever they were doing possible and safe. Did a pedestrian enter a busy road to get to the other side and get run over by a car? If this is more than a one-off, slow the speed limit (not only through signage, but through road design) and install a traffic/crossing signal. Did a teenaged cyclist get hit today trying to cross Birchmount? IDK, but if yes, make the roads safer for absentminded, distracted teen cyclists by putting more limits on the cars, not the cyclists. Vision Zero, IMO should not be about curtailing pedestrians or cyclists within the roadspace, but instead should be about forcing the car driver to accommodate the often unpredictable, seemingly incomprehensive and downright reckless behaviour of pedestrians and cyclists. Someone on their iPhone who steps into Queen East traffic without looking should be honked at, not rundown. We need to change the HTA so that no matter who had ROW, if a car hits a cyclist or pedestrian, it's full liability, criminal charges and game over for the driver. I'm a pedestrian, cyclist, motorcyclist and car driver and the first two need to always come first.... I can manage the second two myself.
 
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Admiral Beez said:
The system should be designed that the mistakes and oversights of pedestrians and cyclists shouldn’t be fatal. Unless someone is suicidal, a pedestrian or cyclist has entered the road space with the intent to either use or cross that space. Curb jumping vehicles aside, this is the genesis of all these pedestrian and cyclist deaths. We need to stop forcing the pedestrians and cyclists to meet the practices and rules of the car driver. Instead, find out what the pedestrians or cyclists were doing when they were struck by the cars and make whatever and wherever they were doing possible and safe. Did a pedestrian enter a busy road to get to the other side and get run over by a car? If this is more than a one-off, slow the speed limit (not only through signage, but through road design) and install a traffic/crossing signal. Did a teenaged cyclist get hit today trying to cross Birchmount? IDK, but if yes, make the roads safer for absentminded, distracted teen cyclists by putting more limits on the cars, not the cyclists. Vision Zero, IMO should not be about curtailing pedestrians or cyclists within the roadspace, but instead should be about forcing the car driver to accommodate the often unpredictable, seemingly incomprehensive and downright reckless behaviour of pedestrians and cyclists. Someone on their iPhone who steps into Queen East traffic without looking should be honked at, not rundown. We need to change the HTA so that no matter who had ROW, if a car hits a cyclist or pedestrian, it's full liability, criminal charges and game over for the driver. I'm a pedestrian, cyclist, motorcyclist and car driver and the first two need to always come first.... I can manage the second two myself.
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There's so much in this post I agree with ..........but......it still requires some nuance, like an understanding of the laws of physics.

Yes, the onus should be on drivers, yes road design should seek to reduce dangerous behavior and speeds of motorists { and cyclists/pedestrians too)

Yes, egregiously negligent driving should be penalized harshly.

But, lets look at the chart below:

1634699361566.png


This is from:


Put another way......For all the things road designers/transportation planners can and should do better; for all the enforcement police should carry out, and for all the
responsibility drivers should reasonably bear.........no, a pedestrian can not simply walk off the curb randomly, without looking, (or with looking) and expect a close-at-hand driver will stop.
It may be physically impossible.
 
tiffer24 said:
There's a long list of pedestrian injuries at this site.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1450545537971900425
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This does not surprise me, sadly.

Danforth in this area almost reads as a highway, particularly with the grade separation/interchange with Kingston Road.

This is what this street looks like, just west of the High School.

The speed limit is nominally 50km/ph; but the road design reads closer to 70km/ph.

That's reflected in what people drive, which certainly isn't safe for anyone crossing on foot.

1634703235483.png


Though you can't see it in this photo, there is a traffic light for crossing just west of the High School.

That said, the school is a long complex, running east from intersection, and its entirely understandable that some students might wish to cross where they exit the building, rather than walking 100M+ out of their way.

This is that light, facing the opposite direction as the photo above:

1634703538289.png


Notice the distance from the light, to the east end of the school: (213M)

1634703690376.png


****

To be clear I don't know exactly where on this stretch the accident took place.

But one can easily see why crossing in this area is both tempting and problematic.

This is a compelling case for re-design beginning in the area to the west, creating a T-intersection, at-grade, for Kingston Road and Danforth.

If you then follow that by extending the cycle tracks out here and allowing only a single lane of traffic each way, you would do wonders to improve public safety.

I'm not sure the median needs to be eliminated if those other changes are made; but it shouldn't be ruled out as an option, because the north side is a greenbelt of sorts (parkland), and the southside, the school is excessively set-back, creating the visual conditions for speed; and neither of those is likely to change in the near term.
 
Northern Light said:
Put another way......For all the things road designers/transportation planners can and should do better; for all the enforcement police should carry out, and for all the
responsibility drivers should reasonably bear.........no, a pedestrian can not simply walk off the curb randomly, without looking, (or with looking) and expect a close-at-hand driver will stop.
It may be physically impossible.
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And cognitively impossible.

Drivers need to be held to a higher test of “expect the unexpected”….. but it is foolish to build the system with the expectation that they will process and react effectively to every last random event.

At best one can hold them to a more rigourous standard of “exercising due care”. Especially in areas where pedestrians are reasonably likely to be present…. such as intersections, crosswalks, sidewalks. Few drivers perceive signalled intersections as “danger zones”….. more like inconvenience zones where their main focus of attention is beating the light cycle so they aren’t stopped by the light turning yellow. I can buy the idea of harsher penalties for striking a pedestrian at an intersection, because it’s something a driver can anticipate and should prepare for. That is a situation where deterrence makes sense. (PS: We already do this with construction zones - "Fines double when workers present" - maybe this should be a norm at intersections and crossings?)

Any theory of process design will tell you that the better way to reduce error is to make the inputs more predictable and consistent. Sorry, but that means regulating pedestrian behaviour in some ways to align to what we are asking drivers to be accountable for.

There’s a lot of social psychology data that says that creating fear of a huge penalty for something that the person can’t control leads to poorer judgement and task performance, not better. Making the driver hold all culpability will put some people in jail for things that are beyond their control. Is that really the outcome we want?

I agree with pushing the bar over, but not with absolutes.

- Paul
 
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facepalming_brooklynite said:
This road shut be shut down for vehicles until the problems have been addressed and the conditions for pedestrians have been made safer.
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Agreed. Shut it down, and narrow it to one lane each direction, add some speed bumps or otherwise slow down the road.

IDK why the city put a four lane road with a wide median down the middle. They basically built a 70 kph road next to a school.

www.google.ca

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
www.google.ca www.google.ca

This piece of road would hardly be missed by most Scarborough drivers.
 
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All this discussion of harsh enforcement as the solution to road safety misses the point that the infrastructure design is the actual problem. You can never enforce your way to safe driver behaviour. You design the infrastructure so that drivers behave safely by instinct. Don't want drivers to speed? Narrow lanes, reduce visibility, tighten corners, add horizontal deflections, etc. Want drivers to slow at pedestrian crossings? You can add flashing lights and cameras all you want, but putting in a speed table and pedestrian refuge in the centre actually works.
 
Far too many speeders and mobile phone users on the roads these days. Caught doing double the speed limit in the city or on the phone. It should automatically be six months loss of car and driver's license. No warnings!
 
gabe said:
Far too many speeders and mobile phone users on the roads these days. Caught doing double the speed limit in the city or on the phone. It should automatically be six months loss of car and driver's license. No warnings!
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There's a lot of "you shouldn't go to jail if you just make a mistake" here, but there are a lot of things we can do that don't involve the criminal law. We should use a lot more license suspensions to get bad drivers off the road.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Agreed. Shut it down, and narrow it to one lane each direction, add some speed bumps or otherwise slow down the road.

IDK why the city put a four lane road with a wide median down the middle. They basically built a 70 kph road next to a school.

www.google.ca

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
www.google.ca www.google.ca

This piece of road would hardly be missed by most Scarborough drivers.
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It puzzles me why schools are built next to an arterial road designated for high/fast traffic. There are examples in the city where schools are located within residential neighborhoods.
 
11th said:
It puzzles me why schools are built next to an arterial road designated for high/fast traffic. There are examples in the city where schools are located within residential neighborhoods.
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I wonder which came first, the road or the site selection for the school.

That goes back through decades of urban planning and property management strategies by many school boards, some pre-amalgamation. The reasons may have made sense at the time, but the one thing you can be sure of is we are looking at things through different lenses today. It’s just history. The best we can do is play the ball where it lies.

It demonstrates how we have laid out our whole urban infrastructure in a way that isn’t going to work.

- Paul
 
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