Through the month of January Toronto was plagued by a string of tragic pedestrian deaths. In total there were 14 deaths in Toronto, some of them quite tragic. Between transport trucks, streetcars and busses the pedestrians stood no chance.

Who was to Blame?

The debate as to who was at fault in these accidents has been a topic of discussion in the media. Whether it is the cars or the pedestrians who are not paying attention is the question. But either way isn’t it both parties faults?

As a pedestrian I don’t think I’m would want to play chicken with a transport truck. Even a SmartCar!

In 2007 the City of Toronto did a study, The Pedestrian Collision Study. Here is a selection of the conclusions of the study:

• 83% of pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions resulted in either minimal or minor injuries
• 12% of pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions resulted in major injuries or fatalities
• 50% of fatalities in pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions were seniors (aged 65+).
• 72% of pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions involved male drivers versus 28% for female drivers.
• Pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions occurred most during the autumn and winter seasons.
• Pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions occurred more often in the downtown area.
• Pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions occurred more often along arterial roads.
• Pedestrian/motor vehicle collisions distributed as follow: at intersections (47%), at non-intersections (37%), and other/unknown (16%).

The City of Toronto did a similar bike-car collision study in 2006. The results can be found here.

What I was reminded of yesterday was does it really matter who is at fault? In the end the pedestrian ends up dead or seriously injured.

How Can we Prevent Future Deaths

1. Alertness: Most importantly both drivers and pedestrians need to be more aware – pedestrian’s in particular. Again as a pedestrian if you play chicken with an automobile the automobile always wins
2. Turning – Left or right, as drivers we should be more aware when turning. Right turns are often worse. On a red light drivers are only looking for on-coming traffic. When lights are green drivers often forget about pedestrians and rush to make the turn
3. Updating Our Intersections: The ‘Scramble’ intersections of downtown Toronto are great, but we can make them even safer. In New Zealand and Japan pedestrians are only allowed to cross when all lights are red. In this manner cars and pedestrians are not competing entities
4. Slow Down: the issue of decreasing speed limits in cities has been raised. Unofficially people in Toronto drive 15-20km/hr over the speed limit so decreasing the speed limit would give drivers more response time
5. Txt Msgs, Email and iPods: Pedestrian’s cannot just walk in oblivion. Be aware of your surroundings and focus on the busy road around you, instead of the latest gadget.

Whether you’re in a car, on foot or on a bicycle you’ll notice the new cracks and potholes of the streets. Back in April I wrote a blog on the increasing number of potholes in the city, why they happen and the cost the city must bear as a result. I rode my bike to work this morning and was just amazed at the number of large cracks in the road, along with the potholes, that made my ride very uncomfortable.

What causes these large cracks in the road?

The engineer in me is about to come out here. The roads in Toronto have been repaired over and over again, so an original paved road that spanned from sidewalk to sidewalk has now been disconnected. You know those sticky, tack like lines on the road that get really soft in the summer, those are either naturally occurring cracks in the road but also a joint between new and old pavements.

It is these ‘joints’ that is causing all the major cracking. These ‘joints’ are a result of the inability of the old and new concrete to bond together. And even though there is this ‘tack’ seal slowly the crack erodes both from cars and from the weather. To make it really simple: the first side of the joint is called the ‘approach’ and as the car drives over the ‘approach’ it sinks away from the ‘leave’ side. This discrepancy between the ‘approach’ and the ‘leave’ causes the tire to slam into the edge of the ‘leave’, breaking away bits of the roads. This picture best describes what happens.

Over time this grows and grows and grows … from what was a small sealed crack to a giant gaping hole.

When does this happen in practice?

This morning I thought to myself I think one of the worst programs the city initiated was replacing all of the sewer grates. The original sewer grates were dangerous to ride over and cyclists complained. The city initiated a program to replace all existing grates. Instead of designing one that fit the original hole the city designed new ones. Although these are safer to ride over the resulting cracks created by the ‘joints’ from the marriage of new and old pavements has actually made this worse. We have replaced one problem with a new one.

In my neighbourhood city workers are also tearing up random transverse strips across roads. Why are they doing this? I’m not quite sure. The strips are usually about two feet wide and can cross anywhere from half a lane to the full width of the road. I’ve seen the construction and it looks like they only tear up the top asphalt and then replace it. And on all the roads I’ve seen it on, it’s not like there are major potholes in the vicinity. This is going to wreak havoc on the roads in the future.

Unfortunately there isn’t much one can do to prevent these cracks. The city really needs to evaluate if the repair they are doing warrants tearing up the street, because it significantly decreases the life of that pavement. These cracks grow from lines in the pavements to gaping holes that could swallow a tire. As budget pressure increases how much money will the city have to spend repairing potholes and cracks?

Transit City: Planning for Light Rail in Toronto
By now many of us have seen the Transit City proposed map and typical street cross-section (I’ve included links here to both). None of the proposed routes are expected to be subway routes, they should all be LRT (light rail transit); there is a huge cost savings by using LRT’s over subways. From the presentation it seemed as though many of the routes were currently being put through the EA process.
What can commuters expect? Vehicles that will be up to 90m long, 3 to 6 minutes between vehicles during peak hours, likely no rate hike in the central zone (potentially a zone system like many European cities), and a loss of parallel local public transportation on these routes (i.e. no TTC buses making frequent stops).
What’s still missing? The key to the future is multi-modal transit, being able to park your car somewhere so it is convenient to use these routes. From what was said it seems as this will be the TTC’s biggest weakness. It is an absolute must to have parking lots at major stations.

Best Practices for the Delivery of Long-Term Projects in Small to Medium Sized Communities
This presentation was aimed at the suburbs of Toronto. The presenter challenged the city engineers present to think outside the box, to use accepted innovative techniques and to plan from the best perspective of the community; was the community stable and slow-growing or was it a high growth area subject to peaks. She commented on how necessary it was to use good data and to verify data often.
There are limitations with planning right now, namely: staff resources, data sharing and cooperation, appropriate tools and data, funding, political and community support and an overall transportation planning strategy with regular data collection. From Toronto to Mississauga to Pickering to Vaughn, ask anyone of those city planners and I’m sure the plans between them all vary greatly.

Twin City Cycling: Burlington’s Lessons Learned from Apeldoorn, NL
Creating a cycling network in the community should be a part of all city and regional transportation plans; to date it is usually an after thought. It is well known that cycling in Europe, more importantly in the Netherlands, is a part of the culture. Cyclists in the Netherlands don’t have to contend with road traffic and have designated one-way cycle tracks (better than a bike lane it has a buffer from the vehicular traffic).
When engineers plan a bike lane they think about planning, designing and construction. While the users think about directness, safety, comfort and attractiveness. To design bike lanes in Ontario we need to use engineering but to design for the user.
Canada vs. The Netherlands: Did you know that in the Netherlands if a motorist hits a cyclist or a pedestrian than the motorist is at fault? Instead of thinking injury prevention like we do in Canada, the Netherlands is thinking collision prevention. By making the motorist responsible there has been an overall increase in the level of duty of care.

Driving the Debate: The Challenges and Opportunities Facing Canada’s Transportation Network
Canada has over 900,000km of road network! And up to 38% of that might be substandard, a total of 22% of our bridges are likely substandard (according to a 1998 report by the council of Ministers – 1998!?! How much of that is substandard now!) More importantly the people driving those roads think they are unsafe, crowded and that there are too many trucks on the road.
How do we solve this? According to CAA Governments need to view roads as investments not as expenses, we need to work within the available funding commitments, commit to “shovel ready” projects, invest in all forms of transportation an forge strong working relationships amongst the provinces

Ontario snowplowing – Does it Work?

Back in December I wrote an article comparing the snow maintenance methods of Quebec and Ontario. I stated then that I thought Quebec was far superior to Ontario for their snow clearing methods and stand by what I wrote. This weekend reminded me why Ontario does not ‘get it.’

Sunday was a beautiful ski day; warm weather (the temperature hovered around 0 deg), blue bird skies and not a drop of precipitation to be seen. This did mean that some of those snow banks were melting, which in turn created some very thick and treacherous ice on the roads. As my friend, Laurissa, and I ventured home we watched a snow-plow go by on the opposite side of the road and actually make the driving conditions worse.

The plow went by and exposed all the ice below the snow surface.

Quebec mandates that all cars are equipped with snow tires, in Ontario we have not even considered such legislation. But when the plow went by it exposed thick ice on the road and placed no sand or salt where it had just cleared. Instead of leaving a snow covered road it left and ice covered road. Laurissa commented that in Manitoba they leave the snow and add sand, which seems like a much more logical, safe, and environmentally safe thing to do.

The drivers made things worse.

As our drive continued we encountered areas that had just been snow plowed, which meant there was thick, shiny, slippery ice in front of us. Leaving a safe distance I watched the reaction of the cars around us. And I’m glad I did. The driver in front of us slammed on the brakes as they approached the ice. Slamming on your brakes is about the worst thing you can do in slippery conditions; the tires lock up, you lose control of the vehicle and typically spins and slides result. The car in front of us almost did a full spin into on coming traffic. I elected to drive on the snowy shoulder and use my transmission to slow me down.

We made it home safely; it just took a lot longer. But it was again a reminder that not only do our snow-plows make the road worse but some of the drivers out there make for very dangerous driving conditions.

Over the last 24 hours there has been some exciting announcements on 680 news with respect to accidents and trucks.

Drivers Should be Held Accountable in Bad Weather

This was the statement from Police Chief Julian Fantino (here). He stated that he believes and the statistics support that 40% of accidents in poor weather conditions are due to irresponsible and reckless driving. With the latest snowfall in Ontario over the weekend there were more than 3000 crashes between Friday and Monday morning; Fantino claimed that 99.9% of them were avoidable.

Fantino’s plan make these irresponsible drivers responsible for the damages. Fantino has put forward to legislation a bill that would make the reckless driver responsible for paying the bill for the accident not the insurance company. This is no radical idea, several US jurisdictions have a similar policy, including Wisconsin.

Speed Limiters for Trucks Hit Ontario January 1, 2009

Do you sometimes feel like the truck beside you is trying to race you as you try to pass it? Well those days are hopefully over. Come January 1st, trucks will be required to have governors installed limiting their maximum speed to 105 kilometers per hour.

But some are opposed to this. As reported by Today’s Truckingthe Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) thinks this law violates the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The OOIDA vows to fight the rule in an effort to have it revoked.

I guess the OOIDA doesn’t understand that safety is paramount. I reported back in October when my friend passed away in that horrible accident on the 427 that I believe that change had to come from the top. The OOIDA is part of the top and their attitude needs to change.  Speed limits are enforced for a reason and truckers, just like motorists, need to respect the speed limit.

Will the roads in Ontario be safer? It is too early to tell. It will be a matter of enforcement. Having laws and regulations in place is not enough, people must be held accountable for their actions for there to be any real difference.

In 1994 The Ontario Government passed a law for graduating licensing. What does that mean? A G1 is granted if one passes a written test and is of at minimum 16 years of age. The G2 is the middle stage and one has to pass a driving test, that does not include highway driving. A finally an individual must do a second highway driving test to achieve their full, G license.  From the time one gets their G1 it takes a minimum of 20 months to get your full license, depending on whether or not you use an accredited driving school.

Drinking and Driving.

Government put forward a motion to have a zero tolerance policy for individuals 21 and under. For those individuals who get their license after the age of 21 there is a one-year imposed zero tolerance policy. This is more a modification to the original legislature for the graduated licensing protocol. Under the original protocol an individual only holding their G2 license had a zero-tolerance policy enforced. Once they had their full license, a G-license, than there is a tolerable limit of 0.08% blood alcohol level. I agree with the legislation, anything to mitigate drinking and driving amongst teenagers.
Speeding. The new legislation is again a zero-tolerance policy. A first offense warrants a 30-day suspension, your second offense gets you a 90day suspension. Upon a third infraction the driver is reverted back to their G1 license.
Passengers.

The new proposal is to limit the number of teenagers in the car to one. Previously the legislation did not limit the number of teenagers during the day, but during the first six months of a teenager could not have more than one teenager in the car between midnight and 5am. Some teenagers are saying that this will only cause more drinking and driving. I have to say that I think that is a little excessive, I’m not sure that any law, television show, media, etc advocates drinking and driving.
This new legislation is in reaction to several recent accidents including the horrific accident up in Muskoka on Lake Joseph. I wrote about the accident here back in August. Unfortunately a cousin of mine was in the accident up in Muskoka. I agree with this legislation, if it prevents accidents, even just one, and a family doesn’t have to go what Allan Mintz went through than I am in favour of these new laws.

In what seems to be a never-ending series, Toronto had another devastating truck accident last night. A transport truck carrying copper piping tumbled from an overpass on to the highway below crushing 4 cars, injuring 4 people and killing 1. (Versions and pictures of the story can be found here, here and here).

Knowing the victim makes this that much harder to swallow, but the loss of innocent lives from truck drivers has to come to a stop.

Can we blame the truck drivers for these accidents?

When my dad called me yesterday to break the news to me my gut reaction was to blame the man driving the truck. After allowing my emotions to subside I realized that In reality although he may have directly caused the accident but he is influenced indirectly for the company he works for. These truck drivers are trying to just make ends meet, they barely get by. With families and the increased cost of living they are forced to practice unsafe measures.

I think the solution is a Top Down Management Approach.

Top Down Management? Until the companies hiring the truckers change their fee schedule and practices these accidents will continue to happen. It is time for safe trucking practices, slowing down, inspecting trucks daily, it is time for the little guy, the truck driver, to have the courage to say no.

In Memoriam of Harry Taylor, a visionary, a dedicated worker and a wonderful father.

My friend Natalie is obsessed with roundabouts. And why not? They improve road safety, keep traffic moving more efficiently and reduce both air and noise pollution.

North America has been slower to adapt the roundabout, our focus has been the signalized intersection. But in Europe the roundabout is widespread.

Ontario is about to start construction on its first roundabout on a provincial highway. This bold move should pave the way for future roundabouts across the province. Although it will take some getting used to I think change sets the stage for breaking away from the ‘norms’ in Ontario.

Our drivers are too complacent and if a roundabout helps to decrease the number of accidents and increase the efficiency of vehicles than we are all the better for it. I look forward to a future in Ontario with more roundabouts.

With no restrictions on mobile phone use in Ontario the driver’s are focusing more or their phones than on the road.

In Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (and What it Says about Us), he notes that drivers who are using a mobile device are not actually paying attention to the road. While talking, although we may be looking forward, we are actually only looking at the front edge of the car. And you can totally forget about peripheral vision. (Think about it the next time you are driving and chatting).

Recently Motricity, a company that measures the mobile user experience, reported that 17% of people are surfing the web in the car while driving. As a supporter of these mobile devices I think it is time where governments step in and protect our roads again; it is time to ban the use of mobile devices while driving.