Safer streets demand action, results
It is encouraging and appropriate for Hamilton city council to reflect the growing concern many of us are feeling about the state of pedestrian safety in the city given the spike in injuries and deaths in recent weeks.
So far this year, eight pedestrians have been killed on Hamilton roads or sidewalks. That’s one short of the total for all of last year, which in itself was a 10-year record for pedestrian deaths. As well as the fatalities, many pedestrians have sustained serious injuries, which is nearly always the case when a car meets a human. And the number of hit-and-run incidents seems to be growing.
This growing list of tragedies prompted Mountain Coun. JohnPaul Danko to put forward a motion calling for more police and city collaboration to deal with the “unprecedented spike” in pedestrian injuries. That’s an appropriate gesture, but it’s not clear what concrete results might flow from it. And we do need tangible results. Police are already aware of the problem and working on targeting the worst intersections for crashes, and also looking for improvements in existing partnerships and new opportunities to collaborate. Again, good, but will those measures result in fewer crashes, injuries and deaths?
Part of the challenge of knowing what to do under the circumstances is understanding what is causing them. So what’s going on? Why are more motorists being less careful around pedestrians? Is it somehow pandemic related? Is impatience and/or lack of empathy more common than in the past due to pandemic isolation and stress? Or is this more about the overall deterioration of civility in society?
Anecdotally, there is little doubt overall road safety has deteriorated due mostly to bad driving. How many drivers actually come to a full stop before turning right on a red, as opposed to slowing somewhat and not coming to a full stop? How many more drivers are running yellow lights or making left turns as or after the lights have changed? We don’t have hard evidence, but would bet the answer is more. A lot more.
The behaviour causing this increased injury and death is almost certainly a symptom of a broader societal malady, but in this case there is little we can do about the overall illness so treating the symptoms is probably the best we can hope for. For that, we need tools.
They include more police presence and enforcement, but that’s not all. Other forms of enforcement like red-light cameras and community safety zone photo radar could have impact. Public education, in particular among younger drivers and pedestrians is worth trying, too. Other, more challenging, tools could include tougher sentences for drivers who injure or kill, especially for those who flee an accident scene.
And speaking of pedestrians, a quick aside about shared responsibility. A recent column by Lorraine Sommerfeld raised the hackles of some readers and letter writers because it put the responsibility largely on the shoulders of drivers, whereas some readers feel pedestrian safety is a shared responsibility.
Of course it’s a shared responsibility. And of course there are careless pedestrians out there, faces buried in phones, oblivious to their surroundings and safety threats. It’s also true that many distracted pedestrians are kids, and it’s well documented that young people don’t have a fully developed sense of their own vulnerability.
So yes, there is shared responsibility, but it’s not remotely equal. The relationship between a pedestrian and motor vehicle is a huge power imbalance, one the pedestrian never, ever wins. Drivers are operating what can easily become a deadly weapon, and that means they have the greater responsibility. Period.
In closing, another aside. The City of Hamilton in 2019 adopted a “Vision Zero” strategy in an attempt to reduce and end traffic injuries and deaths. The overall trend on pedestrian injuries and death has been downward, but obviously something has changed in the last two years, which again suggests a correlation with the pandemic.
Regardless, it makes sense for police, city council and citizens overall to be energized and mobilized on the subject of pedestrian safety. In fact, lives depend on it.