Michael Enright: Take your foot off the gas and stop texting!
Toronto drivers are gunning down Toronto pedestrians at an alarming rate.
So far this year, 41 pedestrians have been killed on the city's streets. That's only slightly less than the city's murder rate.
Oddly, while cars are being built more safely than ever, pedestrian fatalities seem to be on the increase. It is happening in large urban areas across the country.
A number of deaths occur at the change of season, summer to fall when it gets dark earlier and people switch to heavier, less colourful clothing. The most dangerous threat to pedestrians is from left-turning cars into a busy intersection. More than twice as many pedestrians are hit by left-turning cars, than by cars making right turns.
In a five-and-a-half month period, 25 children were hit by drivers; that's one every six days. In terms of injuries, children are far more likely to be seriously hurt than adults.
In most cases, speeding drivers are to blame, especially around school zones.
As we all know, Toronto drivers are the worst in Canada. We have no road manners. We ignore amber and red lights, cut in and out of lanes without signaling, we tailgate, gun the accelerator between speed bumps, make illegal turns, in short, fracture as many driving regulations as we can.
Just as an aside, I've noticed over the years that the more expensive the car, the more dickish the behaviour of the driver. Porsches, Audis and BMWs are the worst. And of course, the ever odious Hummer.
When stories broke about the disturbing number of pedestrians killed and injured, motorists on talk shows and in letter campaigns tried to lay the blame for the fatalities on the pedestrians themselves. As in many corners of modern life, there is an early reflex to blame the victim. Drivers say they can't deal with jay-walking pedestrians, young people often reading their phones or listening to earbuds as they cross a busy street.
Except the argument does not hold up. In a U.S. study of 23,240 pedestrian fatalities between 2010 and 2014, portable electronic devices were a factor in 25 cases. In most collisions, speed and inattention by drivers caused the deaths.
Motorists insist they are not to blame. What do I do, they ask, if I'm driving and a pedestrian suddenly steps off the sidewalk? Well, what you do is hit the brakes and stop. If you can't do that, you are a poor driver. You don't belong behind the wheel.
As a wise old motorcycle instructor once told me, there are no such things as accidents.
A major part of the problem is the way our cityscapes are laid out. We have given our cities over, to the car. People and cars trying to occupy the same space at the same time at a busy intersection can cause tragedy.
A suggested solution is the so-called pedestrian scramble or Barnes Dance, named after the traffic expert who invented it, where at one point all vehicular traffic is stopped in all directions and pedestrians cross every which way. It was tried in one downtown Toronto intersection, but drivers complained they had to wait an extra minute or so before starting up; it was cancelled at that particular intersection. Another idea is pedestrian traffic islands in intersections, which would cut down the number of lanes you have to cross.
But the biggest overall improvement would be the reduction in speed. The World Health Organization reports that you have a 90 per cent chance of surviving a hit from a car travelling at 30 kilometres an hour, but less than 50 per cent from a car at 45 kilometres an hour.
The late mayor of Toronto Rob Ford used to complain loudly that there was a war on cars in the city.
