Achieving zero traffic deaths and a quieter trauma room at Sick Kids
The trauma room at Sick Kids Hospital is often the end of the line for children involved in traffic collisions, whether as passengers, pedestrians or cyclists. Although we see kids injured from falls, burns and sports, injuries from motor vehicles are by far the largest cause of trauma team activations at Sick Kids.
The tragic case of 5-year-old Xavier Morgan, recently killed after falling into oncoming traffic on Lake Shore Blvd. W. from the Martin Goodman Trail, reminds us that the city has a long way to go in achieving Vision Zero, the goal of zero traffic-related fatalities. While Xavier’s case is particularly tragic given his young age, his is part of an alarming trend of cyclist and pedestrian deaths and injuries on our streets.
Last year, Toronto had the highest number of pedestrian fatalities in at least a decade. But unlike disease outbreaks or extreme weather, traffic deaths don’t tend to catalyze societal action because they’ve become normalized. We call them “accidents” and treat them as if they’re an inevitable part of urban living.
Our complacency, of course, has grave consequences. In the myriad decisions that shape the design of our streets, we have long chosen to prioritize speed over safety. The result is hundreds of preventable traffic deaths every year across Ontario.
While a promising start, the investment by the city of $80 million over five years for road safety is woefully insufficient to deal with the situation at hand. When children and others are hit by vehicles on unsafe streets, they arrive in the trauma room with brain injuries, broken bones, punctured lungs and a multitude of other injuries. If they survive, they often face years of rehabilitation, at significant cost to their families and to our health care system.
Mayor John Tory has said that deaths of pedestrians are “unacceptable.” So what will it take to truly address this crisis?
In the long term, self-driving cars have the potential to radically reduce the rate of traffic collisions caused by driver error. But in the short term, distracted driving continues to be an epidemic on our streets. In tackling road safety, Toronto’s Vision Zero initiative is organized around four pillars: engineering, technology, education and enforcement. Let’s apply Vision Zero principles to little Xavier’s story as an example:
On education, one could argue that drivers along Lake Shore Blvd. W. could be better informed about the risks of speeding in the vicinity of a heavily used park trail.
On enforcement, the use of speed traps could reinforce this, especially with a lower speed limit established near parks.
Technology, such as photo radar, could assist in enforcement efforts.
But the fourth pillar, engineering design, may offer the most effective options. Motorists will drive as fast as the roadway encourages them to — not based on the speed limit, but according to the layout of the lanes, sightlines and markings. Lake Shore Blvd. is built for speed and was never intended to be compatible with a multi-use pathway located centimetres from live lanes of traffic.
Rather than abruptly announcing a review of all cycling paths in reaction to a tragic event, we need to embrace proac- tive planning that identifies potential dangers and mitigates risk before tragedies like Xavier’s can occur. This way, sound design principles can be incorporated into every decision. Residents can be encouraged to report unsafe infrastructure and kept in the loop as our streets are reformed, bit by bit, for safety.
Lastly, we must reject the idea that road safety improvements necessarily come at the expense of smooth traffic flow. Calming traffic, a cause for which former medical officer of health Dr. David McKeown advocated, is not a zero-sum game. Rather, we can look to European cities where “road diets” and cycling infrastructure have induced a shift to nonmotorized travel, and the result has been less traffic congestion for the remaining motorists. From this point of view, the loudest advocates for safe cycling infrastructure should be the very motorists that will benefit from fewer cars on the road.
If any light can come out of the darkness of Xavier’s tragic death, may it be that we recognize the preventable nature of traffic-related fatalities.
Temporary barriers along the Martin Goodman Trail are a good start. But Vision Zero demands much more — it means that we must challenge ourselves to imagine and create the safe streets that will make the trauma room at Sick Kids a quieter place.