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Spate of Pedestrian Deaths in GTA

I was driving in the downtown core today, something I rarely do -- I prefer to be a pedestrian. I had four near misses when pedestrians stepped out into traffic, no where near crosswalks or intersections. And one guy was crossing at an intersection -- but on a red -- yelling at traffic that was trying to move forward on the green light. I don't remember seeing so many people taking chances crossing the road like this -- is it spring? was it just an off day? The passenger with me agreed that it was weird to be dodging so many pedestrians in one day!
 
Wanna try something funny? Try doing exactly the speed limit anywhere you are driving, give pedetrians LOTSA room, actually make a full stop at red lights before turning right. Do your stop signs for 3 seconds...I've been doing this for a few weeks, and I swear other drivers are giving me the finger, running lights to get away from me, nearly killing themselves to get out from behind me..and beeping their horns for me to speed up, flashing their lights..it's crazy!! and I'm just driving by the letter of the law. One guy was so mad he blew through a school bus stopped with lights flashing!!

It's really something to see.
 
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^And yet, of the literally billions of individual car trips undertaken in Toronto every year combined with the billions of pedestrian trips, almost all of which involve crossing a road at least once, only 50 pedestrian fatalities will take place in an average year. Even if people (both pedestrians and motorists) are flaunting the rules, driving like maniacs, or jaywalking in busy traffic, there is still enough informal and contextual understanding of how to respond as both a motorist or a pedestrian that a fatality rate that's somewhere on the order of 0.0000001% occurs.

Put another way, the average Torontonian would have to cross a road 100 million times before being struck and killed by a car.

I think that is astonishing and shows the role of metis (experientially acquired informal knowledge) over the much more celebrated techne (knowledge that is formally taught) in shaping how society functions.
 
:cool:Yup, we get good at evasive action, both as a driver and as a pedestrian.
 
One item that I personally think has become a problem for pedestrians is the countdown walk signals at intersections. I drive throughout the city on a fairly regular basis and I can tell you that I and many drivers like me watch the countdown as we approach the lights and speed up sometimes to make sure we get through the intersection. I also find a great many pedestrians don't pay any attention to the countdown. Again, as someone that has to drive in the city on a daily basis I like the countdown. Should we have them? I think in terms of pedestrian safetly the answer is NO. I think the more speed bumps, chicanes, etc. are installed for the war on cars the more frustrated drivers will get, the more road rage we'll see and the more they will speed to make up time.

Speed Bumps, chicanes etc.-why don't the people that live on the street that wants speed bumps etc pay for it through their taxes not mine??
 
dahawk, is it safe to presume your house is on a high-traffic through-street with no such traffic calming?
 
But with all the traffic that accumulates on the throughfares in the Beaches, everything would be a lot smoother if these "quiet residential streets" were reconfigured as through-streets, wouldn't you agree? The absence of speed bumps doesn't put you on any moral high ground if the road configuration is deterrent to permeability. In fact, impermeability has a worse impact on traffic flow than speed bumps.

Everybody loves high-speed through traffic when they're driving through somebody else's neighbourhood, but when it's time to buy a house, it has to be a nice quiet street. Funny, isn't it?
 
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Not only is Toronto behind the rest of the world when it comes to using specific transit signals, but there are cities in the world already using animated pedestrian signals.

[video=youtube;rtob2RLNcv0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtob2RLNcv0[/video]
[video=youtube;yowXiZ6Nb9I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yowXiZ6Nb9I[/video]
 
Remember way back two months ago when Pedestrian deaths were a trend? Whatever happened to that? CTV is sure over it. On last night's news, the scare of the moment was motorcycle crashes. There's been two crashes "in as many days". TWO! Two is a trend ya know. Then they showed clips of motorcycles driving, some would say racing, around the GTA for five minutes. The OPP is "concerned" about motorcyclists crashing. Scary! Who cares about pedestrians, when killer motorcycles are on the loose!
Thank God we have local TV to keep me informed of important matters like this. Tax me CTV, I want to know what will kill me tomorrow!
 
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