Royal City made an early mark on road safety
In the middle of the busy Carden and Wyndham streets intersection, near the Canadian National Railway station, stood a lonely, orange post. Its job was to make traffic safer, by enforcing proper left turns for automobiles. Known sometimes as a “silent policeman,” its more common name was the “zone post.”
By 1910, automobiles had begun to profoundly change the streets of Guelph. Established usage allowed people to move about more or less as they liked: crossing wherever it suited them, stopping for a chat, selling peanuts from a cart, etc. And the streets were reasonably safe — people went around one another, horses (mostly) avoided obstacles, and streetcars went slowly along predictable routes.
Automobiles were different: they could be difficult to control, their manoeuvres were hard to anticipate, they were too dumb not to hit things, and they got bigger and bigger, and went faster and faster. As they came to dominate traffic in cities, collisions with automobiles became a significant hazard for everyone.
Into the breach rode the “Safety First” movement. It was originally an initiative to increase workplace safety, and its advocates began to organize to apply its principles to traffic. The meaning of the name was that safety should be made a priority above other considerations, such as speed and convenience. Automobilists, its advocates argued, should be guided by the same principle.
Among their recommendations was the adoption of “short radius” left turns. Previously, motorists frequently made left turns by “cutting the corner;” that is, making their left turns close to the left-hand curb. While this practice allowed drivers to turn faster, it was hazardous for pedestrians and oncoming traffic that could not see the turning machine until the last moment.
In 1912, the City of Guelph adopted bylaw No. 938 to regulate traffic, which required any vehicle making a left turn to do so only after passing the centre of the intersection first. An accompanying article in the Evening Mercury provided a helpful diagram for puzzled motorists. The new kind of left turn put safety first by slowing down turning cars, and ensuring that their turns were more easily visible to others.
To reinforce this requirement, Guelph police placed “safety zone posts” in the middle of busy intersections, such as Wyndham and Carden. They functioned as “keep right” signs, requiring motorists making left turns to do so around the posts rather than at the corners. In effect, intersections with zone posts became like miniature roundabouts.
In 1917, a wide strip around the Blacksmith Fountain in St. George’s Square was declared a “safety zone.” Zone posts were placed some distance outside the streetcar tracks there in order to ensure that passengers mounting and alighting would not be menaced by speeding automobiles. In effect, St. George’s Square became a sizable traffic circle, with automobiles required to drive counter-clockwise around its centre.
Curiously, zone posts displayed a tendency to move around, especially at night. A zone post at the Quebec and Norfolk intersection repeatedly migrated up to Oxford street in the wee hours. Another one on duty at the “five corners” climbed on top of a monument at Hamilton’s Marble Works (now the site of Speedy Auto Service). Others reached as far as the Ontario Agricultural College or even Puslinch. Police Chief Randall viewed these peregrinations with extreme displeasure and vowed that anyone assisting zone posts in their movements would be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.”
Guelph’s zone posts gradually faded from use.
However, some safety zones have stayed with us. For example, those delineated with white lines across streets at their corners, now known as “crosswalks,” continue to protect pedestrians from the depredations of automobiles to this day.