Redesigned roads won’t reduce stupidity
City report indicates a lot of collisions have happened through driver error
It’s hard to disagree with critics like Coun. John-Paul Danko that the city’s new road safety plan should be putting less money into public education and more into engineering roads to make them safer.
Until, that is, you start looking at some of the collision statistics. Then the overpowering impression is you can’t redesign roads to get rid of reflexive carelessness or stupidity.
Of the $1.7 million in red light camera money that councillors have voted to spend on the Vision Zero plan for reducing traffic injuries and fatalities, fully $400,000 is being set aside for educating drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.
“I’m not sure it’s the city’s job to teach people how to drive or walk,” Danko said.
“In my opinion, the city’s job is to provide a built environment that is safe for all users.”
Danko went on to question the effectiveness of education programs versus the effectiveness of “actually changing the geometry of the roads, which have been proven technically to change driver behaviour.”
But when many people refuse to drive or cycle or walk according to the rules of the road — and common sense — surely somebody has to wag an educating finger.
Based on a 2013-2017 staff assessment, there are on average 8,200 collisions a year in Hamilton, 95 per cent of which are vehicle-only, resulting in a fatality or injury 20 per cent of the time.
Over the same five years, approximately five cent of the accidents involved pedestrians or cyclists, resulting in an injury or fatality 87 per cent of the time.
To break that down further, there were 842 collisions with pedestrians and 1,236 with cyclists, resulting in 25 pedestrian and two cyclist deaths.
Clearly, not being enclosed in a metal carapace makes pedestrians and cyclists vulnerable. But just like drivers, they’re not all without blame.
The city’s just released annual traffic safety report features a five year trend. It shows that when it comes to vehicles hitting pedestrians, the operator was driving properly 36 per cent of the time.
But in other instances, the driver failed to yield the right-of-way 43 per cent of the time, made an improper turn, disobeyed a traffic signal, was speeding, or lost control of the vehicle.
When a vehicle collided with a bicycle, the driver was driving properly 54 per cent of the time. The other times he or she failed to yield the right-of-way, made an improper turn, disobeyed traffic rules, passed improperly, or was speeding.
Frankly, most of that sounds like bad driving not poor road geometrics.
Flip the coin and it turns out half of all pedestrian collisions occurred when a pedestrian was innocently crossing the street with the right-of-way. Other incidents involved pedestrians being hit while walking on a sidewalk, shoulder, or in a crossover.
But in 17 per cent of collisions, they were crossing without the right-of-way and in eight per cent they walked or ran into the roadway. Unfortunately, no road engineering in the world could prevent those latter accidents. Education programs may help.
In the case of cyclist collisions with vehicles, 39 per cent happened when the biker was driving properly. Another 16 per cent involved some action by another driver.
But the rest of the accidents were made up of cyclists failing to yield the right of way, disobeying traffic signals, making improper turns and lane changes, going the wrong way down a one-way street, and losing control of the bike.
Again, you can’t redesign streets to prevent bad cycling. Education and targeted messaging might.
Aside from the $400,000 for education, the rest of the $1.7 million red light camera money is for design projects, community engagement, new collision data systems, and electronic speed boards. Additionally, council has earmarked another $1 million for new pedestrian crossovers, traffic calming measures, and neighbourhood speed limit reductions.
Vision Zero may not be perfect but, as Danko himself acknowledged, it’s a good first step.