Mayor John Tory may be quite confident nowadays that he would sail into a smooth victory in the October mayoral elections given the fact that his former biggest threat, Doug Ford, is now the newly sworn-in Premier of Ontario. Not so fast, Mayor Tory! Gun violence and homicides on the streets of Toronto have recently shot up at alarming rates with no signs of improvement. Meanwhile, accidents and pedestrian/cyclist deaths on Toronto roads have become constant headlines in the news. Let’s leave gun violence and homicides for discussion on another post and focus on the subject of road safety today.

Ever since Vision Zero, a plan announced in 2016 to reduce traffic deaths to zero by 2022, casualties and injuries on the road have not become any better. So far in 2018 (and we’re only half way through the year), four cyclists and 19 pedestrians have been struck and killed, according to data compiled by The Toronto Star. In 2017, four cyclists and 40 pedestrians died. Since the Toronto council has approved Vision Zero two years ago, almost 100 pedestrians and cyclists have died.

Transport Canada data also shows an alarmingly consistent trend: more seniors have died in traffic fatalities than any other age group across Canada, from 2000 to 2015. Over that 16-year time span, seniors accounted for an average of 447 deaths per year. These numbers include several groups on the road – drivers, passengers, pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.

Earlier this year, Statistics Netherlands also published the annual road fatalities and the fact that “cycling is deadlier than driving.” Two-thirds of the cycling deaths were people over 65 years of age. More people have been cycling in the Netherlands, especially the elderly. Statistics Netherlands compared the distance cycled per person per day in 2016 with the number of fatalities in 2017 per age group. The statistics make very clear that there should be extra attention to the over 65-year-olds and their increased risk when cycling.

Although there were no similar statistics in Canada indicating that more older people are now cycling on the road, one can assume that with improved longevity rates in recent decades, healthy seniors are more likely to ride their bicycles to get around town in major cities across Canada. All the more reasons to look at the Netherlands as a role model for road and cycling safety.

In 2016, older citizens bore the brunt of a record-breaking 12 months for pedestrian deaths in Toronto. According to The Toronto Star, 2016 was the deadliest for the city’s pedestrians in more than a decade, with 43 people killed by drivers. That’s the highest death toll since at least 2005, the oldest year on record in data recently released by the city.

The figures show that 2016 also saw the highest number of older people killed on the streets in a decade. Thirty-seven of the victims, or 86 percent, were over 55, which is the age the city’s road safety plan uses to define “older adults.” The demographic makes up about a quarter of the population. The Star also pointed out that although older people regularly account for a disproportionate number of traffic injuries, the percentage of deaths for those older than 55 was the highest in a single year since at least 2005. People aged 65 and older made up 67 percent of victims in 2016. Seniors advocacy group, CARP, said that with the city’s older population set to double to 1.2 million in the next 25 years, the city really has to examine what it is going to do in Toronto to make life safer for an aging population. That’s why Vision Zero was born in the same deadly year.

According to the Vision Zero website, between 2005 and 2016, there were 869 seniors killed or seriously injured in a collision with a motor vehicle. Special consideration will be given at locations exhibiting killed or serious injury collisions where there are higher concentrations of senior pedestrians living and interacting. These areas will be prioritized and targeted for speed reductions, increased walk times at traffic signals, enhanced pavement markings, “Watch Your Speed” driver-feedback signs and police enforcement for aggressive driving behaviours that affect senior pedestrians.

Over hardly 24 hours two weeks ago, Toronto police announced that a cyclist had been killed by a person driving a large truck; a pedestrian had been killed by a driver who fled; and another cyclist, who was hit in May, had died. In another incident a few days later, a motorcyclist was hit and killed by a person driving a sedan, who then fled.

On June 15, 2018, Mayor John Tory directed staff to draw $13 million from the city’s $260 million 2017 budget surplus to add more road safety signs, red light cameras, and infrastructure in 2018. Last week, in response to this crisis, Toronto city council increased that amount further to $22 million, bringing the Vision Zero budget to $43.3 million for 2018 and a total of $109 million over five years. However, I agree with Patricia Wood, York University professor, who said that while council has voted several times to speed up implementation and increase the budget, city councilors might not have understood what Vision Zero is about. Professor Wood said that Vision Zero isn’t about changing behaviour through corrective measures in terms of guilt. “It’s about redesigning the streets and enforcing that road design so it’s easy to understand and conflicts don’t arise,” she said.

It’s encouraging that according to the mayor, the additional money approved for Vision Zero would include funding for physical changes to the kind of street that experts say are necessary to get drivers to slow down.

Examples of improvements Mayor Tory listed included a doubling of this year’s planned increase of leading pedestrian intervals, which allow those on foot to get a head start at intersections, speeding up of spending on road redesign and a clearing of the backlog for installing speed bumps. Other changes could include repainting at intersections and enhancing bicycle lanes to add visibility.

The mayor, however, should perhaps look at good examples from other Canadian cities like Montreal. According to The Globe and Mail, Montreal has just approved funding for 33 kilometres of new bike lanes, to add to 846 they already have, 350 of which are totally separate from car traffic. They are going to eliminate parking spots to build the new ones. Meanwhile, in Toronto, we only have 37 kilometres of separate, protected bike lanes. Instead of the proposed moves so far which simply aim to manage Toronto drivers’ dominance of the road, Vision Zero in Toronto should focus more on redesigning the streets and increasing car-free bike lanes to introduce true sharing of the city among drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. Only then will we feel safer on the road!

Ever since the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal broke, new similar accusations have been emerging everyday around powerful men in entertainment, politics, journalism and the corporate world. Whether it’s on Twitter at  #MeToo, or at tell-all press conferences, a lot of successful, powerful men were caught and shamed.

In the U.S., however, where every person seems to be either a Democrat or Republican, the discussion has gone awry – Republicans would immediately condemn Democrat offenders such as Senator Al Franken while Democrats were relentless with Alabama’s former state judge and Senate candidate Roy Moore. So, even the sexual harassment discussions have become a part of partisan politics. But people are missing a very important point – there should only be one standard for sexual harassment: the behaviour is just plainly wrong and it doesn’t matter which political party does the predator belong to!

So when columnist Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times said that she spent all weekend feeling guilty that she had called for Senator Al Franken’s resignation because she considered him an “otherwise decent man,” my reaction was why? Why would anybody and any woman have a different standard for a politician who’s an ally when he, like all the other accused sexual predators of the opposition party, made equally deplorable mistakes? No sexual predator or harasser can, in any way, be considered as decent and he should rightly be asked to resign. In fact, calling for the resignation of Al Franken is as important as barring Roy Moore from being admitted into the Senate.

We all tend to defend men we like. I used to adore Kevin Spacey because of his acting skills and Shakespearean knowledge. But his behaviour towards young men in the last three decades should really put him in a different light among his fans. Defenders of the various offenders started to put predatory behaviours into different categories – Weinstein’s sadistic serial predation is not comparable to Louis C.K.’s exhibitionism; the groping Franken has been accused of is not in the same moral universe as Moore’s alleged sexual abuse of minors.Unfortunately, there really is no difference and we should not judge them according to the severity of their offences. They were all wrong, plain and simple.

I further disagree with Kate Harding who made this case in The Washington Post last week. She wrote that Democratic sexual offenders may be flawed, but they are the men who “regularly vote to protect women’s rights and freedoms.” But if feminists are asking  for the pardon of sexual predators so that those men could remain in the pool of people who could keep on protecting women’s rights, they are simply enabling these men to continue to be hypocrites.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times was never my favourite journalist, but she does have a point when she said that the Democrats and the world should never have forgiven Bill Clinton for his sexual misdeeds when he was President. She asked in her article last Sunday, “The Hillary Effect“: “Would feminists and liberals make the same Faustian bargain they made in 1998: protect Bill on his regressive behavior toward women because the Clintons have progressive policies toward women?” She went on to say that both the left and the right rushed in to twist the sex scandals for their own ideological ends. Unfortunately, the stench of hypocrisy still overpowers the perfume of justice after all these years.

In fact, without any proof, I would venture to say that one of the reasons why Hillary Clinton failed to get as many women’s votes in the elections last year was because of Bill Clinton’s constant lies about never having had sexual relationships with women from Monica Lewinsky to Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey; and Hillary’s efforts to stand by her man and discredit the women accusers. Hillary’s latest book “What Happened” blamed a lot of people in addition to herself for why she lost the Presidential campaign. But what she did not mention in the book was that her unwavering love for her husband had made her a hypocritical defender of women’s rights. Many women voters, therefore, did not trust her.

Most of the men accused of sexual harassment, so far, have been predominantly baby boomers. I don’t buy the argument that boomer men do not understand the proper behaviour towards women because they are of an older generation. Nor do I agree with Canada’s former interim Leader of the Opposition, Rona Ambrose’s recommendation that all judges should be given a sexual sensitivity training. The proposed JUST Act, which would ensure that any judge who presided over a sexual assault case would receive proper training in the law and also in rape mythology, stereotypes and bias, might eventually be passed as law in the Senate. But I believe that if judges, like former Calgary judge Robin Camp, did not know that the derogatory comments he made to a complainant  (“Why couldn’t you just keep your knees together?”) while questioning her during a sexual assault trial last year were wrong, then he should not be reinstated no matter how much subsequent sensitivity training he has received. It is also important for boomer parents to get this right before they can educate their sons and grandsons on how to respect women and their rights.

All in all, we should be pleased that we’re having a moment of awakening on sexual harassment, and it is possible that this will turn out to have been a turning point. However, when it comes to the standard for upholding women’s rights against sexual harassment, it is important to bear in mind that there should only be one, same standard for all men, no matter what their political affiliations, religions, races or age demographics are.

Photo Credit: dailytelegraph.com.au

I fully support Ontario MPP Yvan Baker’s recommendation to ban people from looking at their phones while crossing the road even though there is widespread criticism that such legislation is equivalent to blaming pedestrians for being hit by drivers. But both drivers and pedestrians have an equal responsibility to keep our roads safe. If drivers are being fined for distracted driving, then pedestrians should also undergo the same discipline to focus on what’s ahead of them when crossing the road.

Although there is not enough research to measure how dangerous it is to walk while looking at a phone or other device, some research suggests that distracted pedestrians put themselves at greater risk. Other analysis says the problem is very small. According to NDP transportation critic Cheri DiNovo, most of the pedestrians that have been killed on the road have been seniors who are not known for talking on their cellphones while walking across the street. But I have seen too many pedestrians – boomers, seniors and millennials alike – looking at their devices and not paying attention to traffic when crossing the road. I have also heard many horror stories how distracted pedestrians accidentally fell into a manhole and seriously hurt themselves because they were not paying attention. A friend’s mother also got killed by a car on a narrow suburban street in the dark while crossing the road.

The Globe and Mail reported that Baker’s recommendation came less than a week after Honolulu enacted a similar law, raising the ire of pedestrian advocates around the world. Baker’s private member’s bill, which is not scheduled for debate until March, generated a lukewarm response from Ontario Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca. The minister stressed that people should be cautious when walking, and that doing it while distracted is unwise, but noted that legislation addressing this was not included in a road safety bill recently unveiled by the government.

Baker is proposing fines for crossing the road while using a phone or “electronic entertainment device.” The penalties would start at $50, for a first offence, and rise to $125 by a third offence. Municipalities would be allowed to opt out. The bill would not cover people who have started a phone call before they began crossing the road which I thought is a loophole in itself – why not ask all pedestrians to NOT cross the road if they are already on the phone? The MPP was backed at this recent announcement by the Ontario Safety League and pointed to reports by the provincial coroner and Toronto Public Health that suggested a greater risk for pedestrians who are distracted. In a 2012 report, the coroner stated that approximately 20 percent of pedestrians killed may have had some form of distraction, such as using a cell phone, an MP3 player, a mobile device, pushing a shopping cart, walking a dog, or riding a skateboard.

In 2016, Toronto had its deadliest year for pedestrians in more than a decade. According to a Globe and Mail tally, 46 pedestrians were killed that year and the majority of these victims were 65 and older, in spite of this group representing only 14 percent of the population. In most cases, the driver was deemed at fault. But prevention is always better than cure – Toronto should follow Honolulu’s example before this becomes a real problem.

Honolulu’s law, which has just taken effect, allows the police to fine pedestrians up to U.S.$35 for viewing their electronic devices while crossing streets in the city and surrounding county. Honolulu is the first major city to enact such a ban. According to the City Council member who proposed the bill, pedestrians will share the responsibility for their safety with motorists. In the U.S., pedestrian deaths in 2016 spiked nine percent from the year before, rising to 5,987, the highest toll on American roads since 1990, according to federal data. A report by the Governors Highway Safety Association found that one reason may be the sharp rise in smartphone use. Even a lot of people know it’s risky, they still use the time walking to and from meetings and business lunches to catch up on calls, texts and emails. They convince themselves that this text is important.

There is a dearth of data directly linking distracted walking to pedestrian injuries and deaths, but it seems to be a global problem too. According to the World Health Organization’s Department for Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention, preliminary studies gave a hint to unsafe behaviour. People who text and walk, for example, are nearly four times as likely to engage in at least one dangerous action, like jaywalking or not looking both ways, and take 18 percent more time to cross a street than undistracted pedestrians. Other U.S. cities are also taking similar measures. In September, San Mateo County, California, passed a resolution prohibiting pedestrians’ use of cellphones while crossing streets. The resolution is expected to go to the California Legislature for statewide consideration in January. Also in September, New York passed a law that directs New York City to study its efforts to educate the public on the dangers of distracted walking.

The Europeans have the same problem but are taking a different approach. The Globe and Mail reported that Bodegraven, a small town near Amsterdam, embedded LED-illuminated strips in the crosswalk at a busy intersection – right in the sight of people staring at their phones. When the traffic lights turn red or green, so do the lights at ground level, alerting pedestrians when it’s safe to cross. If it’s successful, the town hopes to install the lights at more intersections and on bike lanes, and offer them to other cities.

In Augsburg, Germany, similar lights were installed last year after a teenager using her smartphone was struck and seriously injured by a tram when she walked onto the tracks. Other transportation experts recommended focusing on proven strategies like vehicle speed reduction, which is one of the most effective ways to reduce deaths, as survival rates are higher in low-speed collisions. But this, once again, shifts the responsibilities to drivers, instead of pedestrians.

The strongest opposition to new laws banning pedestrians from using their electronic devices while crossing the road revolves around government overreach and concerns about personal freedom. But I believe that people will eventually understand the value of public safety, and concerns about Big Brotherish intervention will lessen with time. Just look at the laws requiring seat-belt use or restricting smoking initially met resistance but are now widely accepted. The pending Toronto legislation is practical, good common sense and will save lives – it should be approved when it comes up for debate next spring.

New numbers from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) show that distracted driving has recently surpassed impaired driving in automotive fatalities. According to a CTV news report last month, for the first time in Ontario, deaths from distracted driving are double that of impaired driving. So far this year, there have been 38 fatalities due to inattention behind the wheel compared to 19 who have died due to impaired driving. Statistics released last year by the OPP found there were 69 distracted driving fatalities on OPP-patrolled roads compared to the 45 impaired-driving fatalities. In B.C., the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia found that in 2014, 64 people were killed in impaired-driving related fatalities compared to 81 who were killed due to distracted driving.

Figures from Saskatchewan Government Insurance also show that 26 people were killed and nearly 600 injured in more than 3,300 collisions related to distracted driving in 2014, compared with 46 fatalities attributed to alcohol.

The problem was so serious that in Toronto, public educational billboards for a made-up funeral home with the morbid message, “Text and Drive. Wathan Funeral Home,” were mounted on the Gardiner Expressway near the Exhibition grounds, and another at Albion Road at Steeles Avenue. The black and white billboards were designed by Toronto ad agency john st. and donated by Cieslok Media as their contributions to spreading the word about a problem that people think they are invincible to.

British Columbia and Ontario have banned the use of hand-held communications and electronic entertainment devices while driving. Alberta expands its legislation beyond hand-held electronic devices to include other forms of driver distraction, including eating, drinking, reading, writing and personal grooming. Fines for distracted driving currently range from up to $145 and four demerit points in Quebec to $579 in Nova Scotia and up to $1,000 and three demerit points in Ontario. In B.C., a ticket for a first offence is $543 and $888 for the second offence, with four demerit points.

According to Global, a spokesperson for the Federal Justice Department said most provinces and territories (with the exception of Nunavut) have penalties for distracted driving and criminal charges can be laid when cases reach a level of dangerous or careless driving. Under the Criminal Code of Canada, dangerous driving causing bodily harm carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, while dangerous driving causing death carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.

In response to mounting media and safety advocacy groups’ pressure about the need to criminalize distracted driving, Federal Transportation Minister Marc Garneau said earlier this month that distracted driving is a “big problem” and promised to raise the issue with his provincial counterparts in a Toronto meeting yesterday. Unfortunately, Transport Ministers from across Canada seemed to have mixed feelings about this subject and would not commit to a consensus about an action plan.

Most people think that only millennials are culprits in texting and driving but, in fact, I know a lot of baby boomers who are equally guilty of this dangerous habit. I believe that not only should we criminalize distracted driving, but we should also introduce roadside “textalyzer” tests in the aftermath of a collision just like what New York is proposing. Under a new road safety bill being proposed in the New York State legislature, all drivers in the state would automatically consent to having police digitally scan their phones using roadside “textalyzer” tests. The technology is the digital equivalent of the breathalyzer tests used on drunk drivers, enabling cops to detect whether drivers were texting or posting on Facebook while driving.

The proposed bill also states that any “refusal to submit a mobile telephone or personal electronic device to the field testing will result in the revocation of the driver’s licence or permit,” effective immediately. Depending on how the testing works, that could also mean surrendering your device’s PIN or encryption password to the cops and simply trusting their technology to only extract information relevant to distracted driving.

New York was the first state to ban the use of cellphones while driving and has a reputation for pioneering road safety regulations later adopted across the country. According to Governor Andrew Cuomo, motorists have seen an 840 percent increase in tickets for texting while driving since 2011. The New York Times reported that in the U.S., 14 states currently prohibit the use of hand-held devices by drivers, and 46 ban texting, with penalties ranging from a US$25 fine in South Carolina to US$200 fines elsewhere, and even points assessed against the driver’s licence. A handful of states, including New York, have strengthened their original bans, which in 2014 adopted tougher sanctions that include a 120-day suspension of a permit or a licence suspension for drivers under 21, while a second offence calls for a full-year suspension.

It might still take a while to fine-tune the “textalizing” technology and making sure that privacy and civil liberties are protected at the same time. But it is time to take a more serious approach in Canada too to stopping drivers who continually engage in reckless behaviour, such as texting, using apps and browsing the web on their mobile devices while behind the wheel. Until distracted driving is treated as seriously as drunk driving, the former behaviour will continue to cause more fatalities on the road!