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!

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.

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About this time last year, my blog post titled, It Is Time To Criminalize Distracted Driving, advocated that more severe legislation should be introduced to punish distracted drivers who text or talk on the cell phone and take their eyes off the road. Federal Transportation Minister Marc Garneau has said last September that distracted driving is a big problem and promised to raise the issue with his provincial counterparts.

Yesterday, the Transportation Minister of Ontario, Steven Del Duca, announced at a news conference that the Ontario government will bring in higher fines for distracted drivers and drivers who do not yield to pedestrians. It will also introduce a new offence of careless driving causing bodily harm, with penalties that would include a licence suspension of up to five years, a fine of up to $50,000 and even jail time of as much as two years. This is very good news because even though it may still not be severe enough to a lot of people who have lost their loved ones in accidents involving distracted drivers, at least, it will send a loud message to motorists about the need to be alert at all times when they are in charge behind the wheel.

Other changes in the Ontario government proposal included drivers who fail to yield to pedestrians will face a maximum $1,000 fine and four demerit points. Distracted drivers will face a licence suspension of three days – a first in Canada – and a maximum fine of $1,000 and escalating penalties for further offences. Minister Del Duca said the plan will reach the legislature for approval some time in the fall.

Upon approval, the new Ontario law against distracted driving would be one of the strictest in the entire country. With the exception of Nunavut, every province and territory in Canada has legislation against using a cell phone while driving. Penalties range from three to five demerit points and fines from $100 to $1,000, depending on the province or the territory.

However, according to CTV News, a majority of Canadians believe that technology is the best way to stop drivers from being distracted by the phones in a new poll conducted by insurance company Aviva Canada. The poll found that 78 percent of Canadians believe only technology that stops people from texting and using other phone functions while driving will make our roads safer, not police crackdowns or peer pressure. Such technology would look like the Do Not Disturb While Driving feature on the newest Apple mobile device operating system iOS 11.

Today, more people die on Canadian roads from distracted driving than impaired driving. According to the RCMP, four out of five collisions occur when a driver has their eyes off the road for just three seconds. According to a Globe and Mail report by Oliver Moore, over the past five years, more than 450 pedestrians and cyclists have been killed in motor vehicle collisions in five most populous cities of Ontario and on roads patrolled by the Ontario Provincial Police. Last year, Moore calculated that the number of pedestrians killed in Toronto from 2011 to 2016 was greater than the number of fatal shootings. The Ontario Transportation Ministry says in its news release that on average, one person is killed on the roads of Ontario every 17 hours. In 2014, pedestrians and cyclists made up approximately 25 percent of road fatalities in the province. Many of these deaths are, of course, avoidable.

Kudos to the Ontario government for taking prompt action, but I still believe that the province needs to adopt the textalizer tests as proposed by the New York State legislature to have police digitally scan the phone of distracted drivers to see whether they were texting or posting on Facebook while driving. Most of the victims run down by motorists were older pedestrians or cyclists. As a society, we need to protect the most vulnerable by introducing more severe laws such as permanently suspending  the licences of distracted drivers and longer jail terms. But the recent proposed legislation by the Ontario Transport Minister is a solid first step to change the attitudes of drivers.

Photo Credit: AM640

Mayor John Tory’s announcement of the creation of Seniors Safety Zones at 12 intersections in Toronto earlier this month was a laudable move. This plan was a response to statistics that showed an overwhelming majority of pedestrians killed on Toronto’s streets last year were older adults. According to police data released the first week of January, 37 of the 43 pedestrians killed last year were 55 or older. The Toronto Star reported that 2016 was the deadliest year for pedestrians more than a decade, and also the worst year for older pedestrian deaths over that time.

The Seniors Safety Zones created for the 12 earmarked intersections includes a reduction in the speed limit from 50 to 40 kilometres per hour and an extension of the amount of walking time given to pedestrians in the intersection. There will also be new Seniors Safety signs warning drivers to slow down and watch for seniors and updated paint on the pavement. Red light cameras are also being installed. The 12 spots were chosen because history has shown seniors to be at risk. Most of these locations are outside the city core – the only downtown location is where Dundas intersects with Spadina – and many are on high-speed suburban arterials that pose great risk to pedestrians. Among them is the intersection of Eglinton and Midland Avenues, where two pedestrians were killed in 2016. These spots will be redone within the first quarter of this year.

As well as the seniors zones, the city is planning to add 76 red-light cameras, roughly doubling the number currently in place. The Globe and Mail pointed out that the planned locations are a mix of downtown and suburban sites and include some spots notorious for cars blocking the intersection, endangering pedestrians and impeding vehicle traffic. The city says that serious collisions at spots that currently have these cameras are down 60 percent since they were put in place. According to Mr. Tory, he would be happy if the cameras generate no revenue, because it would indicate drivers are being more safe. City staff are aiming to have the cameras operational within the first three months of the year.

The city also announced the creation of a new website for the road safety plan, which will allow residents to track its progress and view data on traffic collisions. The road safety plan, which is the city’s first such strategy, will be executed over five years. Other safety measures include installing accessible pedestrian signals at 20 intersections, making geometric safety improvements at 13 locations, performing 14 road safety audits, speed reductions on 32 corridors, and expanding the “watch your speed” program.

Toronto’s innovation to ensure road safety originated from the Vision Zero Initiative of Sweden in 1997. The Swedish initiative can be summarized in one sentence: No loss of life is acceptable. The Vision Zero approach has been very successful and road deaths in Stockholm are now at low levels not seen since the 1950’s.

Edmonton was actually the first Canadian city which officially adopted Vision Zero in 2015. In 2006, there were 8,246 people injured and killed in collisions on Edmonton streets. The city responded by creating the first municipal Office of Traffic Safety in North America that year. According to the city’s website, “in spite of the population growth since then, in 2015, there were 3,837 people injured or killed, a decrease of 53.5 percent.” With Vision Zero, Edmonton plans to save lives and eliminate serious injuries through the application of a Safe System, evidence-based approach and the 5 E’s of traffic safety: engineering, education, enforcement, engagement and evaluation.

A year ago, 10 American cities have been chosen to model Vision Zero strategy in the U.S.: Austin, Boston, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington. These cities brought together transportation, police and public health officials as well as representatives from mayors’ offices. This network of public officials shares best practices and develops common strategies for eliminating traffic deaths.

New York City, in particular, should be a role model for Toronto. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s leadership, New York has become one of the first North American cities to truly embrace Vision Zero. The centrepiece of the city’s program is a 10-year, US$1.2 billion capital plan to redesign the city’s streets with safety in mind. The city has lowered its default speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 25 (40 km/h) in 2014, redesigned collision-prone intersections, added new speed cameras and made it a criminal offence for drivers to fail to yield to pedestrians. The results were immediate. The number of pedestrian deaths dropped from 180 in 2013 – a record high – to 139 in 2014 – a record low, according to city data. Pedestrian fatalities dropped to 134 in 2015, making it the safest year on New York City streets since record-keeping began in 1910.

New York City also has a Safe Streets for Seniors program which studies crash data, and then develops and implements mitigation measures to improve the safety of seniors and other pedestrians, as well as all road users in the city. Since launching the program in 2008, the city has addressed senior pedestrian safety issues in 25 Senior Pedestrian Focus Areas (SPFAs) in the five boroughs. The SPFAs were selected based on the density of senior pedestrian (aged 65+) crashes resulting in fatalities or severe injuries in a five-year period. Since the program began, annual senior pedestrian fatalities have decreased 10 percent citywide, from 58 senior fatalities in 2008 to 52 in 2015.

Since Vision Zero began in Sweden in 1997, the country now has the lowest rate of traffic fatalities in the world. More recently, Vision Zero has been adopted by Australia and England in addition to the U.S. cities mentioned above. In January last year, Canada adopted Vision Zero as a federal strategy in principle. With Edmonton and Toronto  now in full gear, more Canadian cities from coast to coast should join the initiative, particularly in ensuring the safety of senior pedestrians in light of the nation’s aging population.