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Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Walking for Wellbeing

New York responsible for Road Violence Injuries in Landmark Decision

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As reported in Streetsblog the State of New York’s Court of Appeals has made a landmark ruling that may have implications across the U.S.-“New York City and other municipalities can be held liable for failing to redesign streets with a history of traffic injuries and reckless driving.”

The ruling  arises from the consideration of a crash where a vehicle being driven over 50 miles per hour in a 30 mile per hour zone crashed into a 12-year-old boy on a bicycle and the boy has been awarded 20 million dollars in damages. Here’s the interesting part –“The court held that departments of transportation (DOT) can be held liable for harm caused by speeding drivers, where the DOT fails to install traffic-calming measures even though it is aware of dangerous speeding, unless the DOT has specifically undertaken a study and determined that traffic calming is not required.”

It turns out that residents had asked the City several times to provide traffic calming measures on Gerritsen Street, which was locally known for speeding vehicles. DOT subsequently conducted studies at three intersections, according to court documents, and “notified police of the speeding problem after each study.” But DOT didn’t look at the incidence of speeding along Gerritsen Avenue as a whole, and failed to look at traffic calming measures to slow down vehicles.

The judge commented: It is  known among traffic engineers that straight, wide roads with little interference from pedestrians and other vehicles, such as Gerritsen Avenue, encourage speeding because drivers feel more comfortable on roadways with those characteristics…traffic calming measures deter speeding because they cause drivers to be more cautious, and that such measures are known to reduce the overall speed on roadways.” The upshot? The jury could conclude that “negligence was a proximate cause of the accident”.

Such a ruling will mean that city budgets will include funding for street safety redesigns, and  will mean that traffic safety improvements are no longer “subject to debate and contingent on unanimous local opinion.” It also means that in New York State  when traffic calming is recommended in studies  to reduce road violence,that the municipality is encumbered to install the infrastructure. This is truly a game changer.

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Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Walking for Wellbeing

That City Walk Can Kill You

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In January noted journalist Daphne Bramham wrote in the Vancouver Sun a very cogent article offering a  simple solution to pedestrians trying to navigate across streets in our low light and rainy winters-don’t wear black.  A lot of responders to her article bristled at the fact that Daphne was brave enough to state the obvious-vehicle operators often  cannot see pedestrians.

We live in a province where 280 people are killed annually and 79,000 people maimed in car crashes. This is a big number and serious enough that the Provincial Medical Officer wrote his yearly report on car crashes. What causes them? Dr. Perry Kendall surmised that speed (36%), distraction (29%) and impairment (20%) were largely responsible. Rates of crashes resulting in serious injuries have risen from 38 per cent in 2007 to 46 per cent in 2009.  Road design, distraction and speed are major contributors. I’d add visibility as well.

In October 2016, twice as many pedestrians died as were killed in the last six years. The Coroners Service of B.C. lists that from 2010 to  October 2016, 396 pedestrians were killed by vehicles in British Columbia. In B.C., Vancouver is the pedestrian death capital of Canada-it has more pedestrian deaths than any other city, and twice those of Toronto per capita. Sixteen per cent or 64 of those deaths were in Vancouver. Thirteen per cent or 50 deaths were in Surrey. Abbotsford, Richmond and Burnaby also had high percentages of pedestrians killed. Of those dying, 57 per cent were male. One third of those dying were 70 years or older. Forty per cent of pedestrian deaths happened at intersections in Metro Vancouver, with two-thirds crossing while the light was green.

But here is the statistic I found remarkable-61 per cent of all the pedestrians killed in British Columbia were over 50 years of age. That is a huge number and a worrying one. While we have focused our attention on road safety to school children, this suggests we also need to address the older part of the population who may not be as nimble or cognitively attune to the fact they are vulnerable. Of course there needs to be a sea change in driver behaviour and education, slower speeds, and municipalities that will redesign intersections to stop the carnage of their citizens. We as citizens also must get angry and insist that politicians pay attention to this  road violence needlessly yanking out lives.

In Finland every child going to school must wear three pieces of reflective items on their clothes and backpack. The safety reflector was developed in Finland in the 1960’s and it is the law that walkers wear reflective items in the dark. Wearing reflectors and reflective clothing is completely accepted as daily wear in Scandinavia which also has the lowest incidence of pedestrian accidents. A similar program in Great Britain reduced children’s pedestrian deaths by 51 per cent.
Studies show that reflectors increase the visibility of pedestrians from 25 meters to 140 meters, increasing the reaction time from 2 seconds to 10 seconds for a car being driven at 50 kilometers per hour. That’s eight seconds more for a driver to react, and a pedestrian to survive. We can’t pretend that this is not the wild west for road violence-it is, and in Metro Vancouver we are in the leaders of carnage in  Canada. Wearing reflective wear is quite simply the right thing to do, along with lobbying for slower speeds, more campaigns on driver behaviour, and redesigning street intersections as if walkers really mattered.

 

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Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians

New Zealand, Older Pedestrians and Road Safety

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An article in the New Zealand Herald  notes how diminished the pedestrian is for road space in that country.  Lynley Hood is a researcher in Dunedin who is losing her sight and has started a petition asking the government to reduce the number of pedestrians killed on New Zealand roads. In New Zealand pedestrians do not have priority over motor vehicles when crossing side roads and intersections.

Between 2006 and 2015 384 pedestrians were killed on New Zealand roads. Ninety cyclists were killed during the same time. Dr. Hood notes that the government “has more than $350 million invested in a Cycling Safety Action Plan. There is no pedestrian safety plan.” Thirty per cent of the pedestrians killed on the roads were 65 years and older. Ms. Hood notes that the 104 seniors in that 30 per cent of  pedestrians were more than the total of cyclists killed, but that no special funding was available to ameliorate the cause of this carnage.

Ms. Hood had little interest in her work except from New Zealand’s chief coroner. Since the senior population in New Zealand will double in the next two decades that means the pedestrian death rate could also double.

“Older people need to walk for exercise, Dr Hood said, and they have to cross roads. They are more unstable, move more slowly and are likely to have sight and hearing problems.When crossing a road they have no protection, and they are generally poorer judges of speed and distance. What’s needed is some commitment by Government to pedestrian safety. There are a lot of young traffic designers who would leap at the chance of tackling the challenge if Government put some money into it. We’re not all petrolheads.”

In New Zealand anything that is not a motorized vehicle uses the sidewalk including scooters, skateboards, mobility scooters and Segways as well as walkers. There is no set standard for width, design, surface or grade. In a country with a population size similar to British Columbia’s it is time for motordom to accept the right of all users, and to give pedestrians the priority for safe access across roads.mot_blames_victims

Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Walking for Wellbeing

Smart Growth USA and Dangerous By Design

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Smart Growth America has just released their 2016 edition of Dangerous By Design which examines the epidemic of pedestrians that are killed by cars. Imagine-in the United States between 2005 and 2014 over 46,000 people were killed by being struck by cars. That is the population of Cornwall Ontario or Brandon Manitoba.

Unlike the Canadian Automobile Association that has just released a study breathlessly listing the worst traffic bottlenecks inconveniencing drivers in Canada, Smart Growth USA gets it right-this is not about the inconvenience of vehicular traffic being throttled down by road capacity and so-called “waiting time lost” but about the fact that we are killing off innocent people, whose only crime was to be walking on a sidewalk or a street when their life was snuffed out. But no one is talking about the eleven Vancouver pedestrians that were killed on city streets, or the hundreds maimed, many legally walking  with the right of way when crossing in a marked intersection. We had 11 murders in the City of  Vancouver in 2016. Please double that number and recognize the people who were also snuffed out by road violence. Where’s the concerned commentary of the Mayor and Council? Per capita, pedestrians are dying at TWICE the rate of pedestrians in Toronto. And no one in authority is addressing this epidemic.

As Smart Growth America states:  “In 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, 4,884 people were killed by a car while walking—105 people more than in 2013. On average, 13 people were struck and killed by a car while walking every day in 2014. And between 2005 and 2014, Americans were 7.2 times more likely to die as a pedestrian than from a natural disaster. Each one of those people was a child, parent, friend, classmate, or neighbor. And these tragedies are occurring across the country—in small towns and big cities, in communities on the coast and in the heartland.”

Smart Growth America has a webinar yesterday to report their findings. They have partnered with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) as seniors are fifty per cent more likely than younger people to be hit and killed by a car while walking. People in lower income neighbourhoods and different ethnic backgrounds where also disproportionately at higher risk to be killed walking even after controlling for the relative higher walking rates associated in these communities.

Street design, speeding vehicles and poor pedestrian infrastructure also need to be addressed. British Columbia’s Medical Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall  notes that vulnerable road users-those without the enclosure of a steel vehicle-were 31.7 per cent of vehicle fatalities in 2009 and are now 34.9 per cent in 2013, the last year there are statistics.In total 280 people are killed annually in collisions in this province, with 79,000 people seriously injured. In a place where the government covers health care, you’d think our politicians would be advocating changes in driver education and behaviour, slower speeds, and road design that makes vehicles slow down. What is it going to take?

 

Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Society

“Seniors Safety Zones” Toronto’s Answer to Road Violence?

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Ben Spurr of the Toronto Star reports on the City of Toronto’s response to the fact that 37 of the 43 pedestrians killed in Toronto in 2016-a staggering 86 per cent-were seniors over 55 years.  Mayor John Tory stated: It was the deadliest year for pedestrians in more than a decade, and also the worst year for older pedestrian deaths over that time. We must do more to prevent these deaths and to protect residents across the city. The number of people killed on our roads, pedestrians, every year, should be zero.” 

That is great to hear as Toronto’s “Vision Zero” for pedestrian deaths originally meant a 20 per cent reduction in the next five years.  It seems that Toronto wasn’t aware of what Vision Zero meant-as stated by the Swedish Vision Zero Initiative, “The Vision Zero is the Swedish approach to road safety thinking. It can be summarized in one sentence: No loss of life is acceptable. The Vision Zero approach has proven highly successful. It is based on the simple fact that we are human and make mistakes. The road system needs to keep us moving. But it must also be designed to protect us at every turn.” 

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Road deaths in Stockholm  are now at low levels not seen since the 1950’s.

Toronto’s approach has been to create what they are calling “senior zones”on 12 intersections where seniors have been maimed and killed. Speed limits are being reduced  10  km/h to 40 km/h, “seniors safety signage” will tell drivers to slow down, pavement markings and longer pedestrian crossing times will be programmed. Red light cameras will also be installed.

Lowering the speed fractionally for a street as opposed to a slower speed for a larger area and not changing the design of the street to physically slow cars seem to be pretty conservative changes.The City is installing its first ever road safety program after a horrifying loss of life. Time will tell if the baby steps of signage and police regulation will be enough to mitigate the speed and driver behaviour killing and maiming older  walking Torontonians. Road design changes for visibility and slower speeds as well as  massive behavioural change for vehicle drivers may be  necessary. Here’s hoping their approach works.

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City rediscovers walking, Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Society

Making New York City’s Fifth Avenue into a Pedestrian Mall

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Dna info reports that the New York City Police Department is finding it challenging to have a President-elect living in New York City. “The massive NYPD presence around Trump Tower is costing the city millions of dollars, which has yet to be reimbursed by the federal government, to the alarm of Mayor Bill de Blasio and local elected officials.”

But Janette Sadik-Khan has an elegant solution which she shared with the New York Times. Donald Trump lives at Trump Tower at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, the same five lane Fifth Avenue “that joins the New York Public Library, the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center, as well as numerous cathedrals of commerce, tourism and high-end retail. Because the avenue is such a popular destination, retail floor space there rents for $3,000 per square foot a year, the highest price in the world, more than double the cost of similar space along the Champs Élysées. It seems appropriate that gold is a popular color for building facades on Fifth.”

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As people flow through this area of Fifth Avenue in their day-to-day activities, the street and sidewalk movement has been challenging due to the required police officers and secret service agents near the Trump Tower. And New Yorkers are  unhappy “The motorcades and security restrictions that will result will permanently paralyze the city’s streets. The swearing-in hasn’t even happened, but the swearing has already started: New Yorkers want their Fifth Avenue back.”

Ms. Sadik-Khan sees this as an opportunity to not close Fifth Avenue but to “reclaim” Fifth as a  “pedestrian street, free of private vehicular traffic but shared with mass transit. The change, which should span the stretch of the avenue from Central Park to the Empire State Building at 34th Street, would create a truly American public space: an entirely new civic platform at the nation’s new center of political gravity.” Since commercial vehicles are already banned from Fifth Avenue, two lanes would be reserved for buses, and the other three lanes could be dedicated for pedestrians. New York has already proven that streets that accommodate more people are great for business bottom lines.

“New Yorkers get their street back, the federal government gets a zone that would make the job of protecting the president easier, and President Trump gets a public space he can call his own.“

It would be a win-win all around.

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City rediscovers walking, Society

Montreal’s Innovative Neighbourhood Inspired Pedestrian Projects

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Sometimes its easier just to get out of the box, build something, call it a demonstration project-and if it is successful, make it permanent. As CBC reports that is exactly what the City of Montreal is doing on Atwater, Roy and  Wellington Streets.

The City of Montreal will spend $1.7 million dollars over three years to transform one block lengths of Roy Street East and Wellington Street, and several parts of St. Ambroise and Atwater Street. Grants will be given  to neighbourhoods to create and animate pedestrian oriented pilot projects. Depending on the effectiveness of the closures, the streets will remain fully pedestrianized year round or for part of the year.

This is the third year this program has been operating, with approval ratings as high as 90 per cent from participating neighbourhoods.

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Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians

Curbing Road Violence Against Pedestrians-Peter Ladner Weighs In

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“For some reason, we’ve come to accept this road violence against pedestrians as part of the wallpaper of urban living – even as “walkable cities” are the holy grail of city planning everywhere.”

 Peter Ladner in his latest editorial in Business in Vancouver calls it for what it is: we have an epidemic of Road Violence in Vancouver. Peter states in his editorial:  “Never mind calling back Mayor Gregor Robertson from Mexico to clear our icy sidewalks. We should be asking him to stay home in January and protect seniors from being killed by cars. Vancouver is the pedestrian death capital of Canada, and January is peak month for pedestrian deaths in B.C. – expect more than seven.

Based on five-year averages, 61% of those killed will be 50 or older. Our pedestrian death rate is twice that of Toronto, where one pedestrian is injured every four hours, and 44 pedestrians were killed in 2016. In last October alone, 10 pedestrians died in five Lower Mainland municipalities. There were as many pedestrians slaughtered by cars in the city of Vancouver (11) last year as there were murder victims.

My son was walking to work across a marked intersection at Pender and Jervis, on a green light, at 7:30 on an October morning two years ago when a car knocked him to the ground. He is still suffering from the concussion he incurred. The driver stopped and leaned out the window to ask if he was all right, then drove off. It turns out his situation is typical: according to a BC Coroners Service report, 40% of pedestrians killed in Greater Vancouver were struck at intersections and in crosswalks and two-thirds were crossing while the light was green. It might also be the case that many of the pedestrians who got hit were, like him, wearing dark clothing. In some Nordic countries the widespread use of reflective clothing has greatly reduced road violence.

But it’s too simple to blame pedestrians. I remember the first time I saw the 30 km/h zone painted boldly on Hastings Street around Main – the most dangerous pedestrian intersection in the Lower Mainland. My first reaction was: “Why should I slow down because impaired people choose to lurch into oncoming cars?” Then I sobered up and reframed the question: “Why should saving a few seconds of driving be more important than killing someone?”

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Peter notes that when some European countries adopted laws where vulnerable road users, not road drivers were assumed to be innocent, injury and fatality rates dropped by 70 per cent. HUB cycling recommends a 30 km/h speed limit on non arterial streets-the survival of a pedestrian crashed into at 30 km/h  is 90 per cent at that speed, and only 15 to 20 per cent at 50 km/h. 

Peter points out that it is the Province-Minister of Transportation Todd Stone-who could implement this and who “is not interested. Nor is he interested in photo radar and red-light cameras. Research in Europe found there were 42% fewer serious injuries and fatalities where photo radar and cameras were installed.”  Minister Stone dismissed this as a “tax grab”. Peter suggests this is the same as saying “Seniors are expendable if it gets me votes from car drivers who want the freedom to kill them by breaking the law and letting ICBC pick up the bills.”

Getting to zero pedestrian fatalities needs ” lower speed limits, safer intersection design, better pedestrian signals, tougher enforcement to stop speeding and distracted driving (none of us should be taking calls from people while we’re driving), more reflective clothing, cyclists using lights and more. But mostly it means getting serious about this ongoing car violence against mostly seniors, in every neighbourhood, especially in January. “

 

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Enhancing Safety for Pedestrians, Walking for Wellbeing

“Some Element of Driver Distraction” responsible for Road Violence

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On the south side of the Fraser River,  Delta Chief of Police Neil Dubord is well-known for his community policing approach, and for the motto of the Delta Police Force-“No Call Too Small”.  There have been devastating  fatalities from road violence in Delta. In Tsawwassen with a population of  just over 20,000  two separate fatalities of elderly pedestrians occurred on the commercial  well-lit, well used 56th Street. Both of these pedestrians were lawfully crossing with the walk signal in well-lit intersections. Both of these pedestrians were mowed down by vehicles making left turns through the crosswalk.

In reviewing the road violence in Delta, the Chief noted that Delta with an overall population of 100,000 people had seven fatal motor vehicle accidents, with eight deaths. As the Chief says “Eight people, young and old, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, whose lives were cut short. The ripple effect of these accidents in our community and within the Delta Police Department is felt for a long time.”

In accident investigation the Police looks at ” road design, weather conditions, impairment, distraction, speed … Our traffic investigators look for root causes in order to focus our prevention efforts on three things: engineering, education and enforcement.” But here is what is profoundly heartbreaking:  The Chief reports that “The common thread in the fatal accidents in 2016 was not about road design or engineering; each one had some element of speed and/or distraction. And, most importantly, they were all preventable.”

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“Delta is a community that many people drive through to get somewhere. Highways 91, 99, 17, the George Massey Tunnel, the Alex Fraser Bridge, Tsawwassen Mills and the ferry terminal all impact on our community…Enforcement can sometimes give the police a bad rap. Some people see speed traps and think police should be out doing real police work. For those of us that have had to do death notifications, I can tell you that road safety is as real as it gets. And unfortunately, enforcement only carries us so far. There comes a point where all drivers and pedestrians must take responsibility and help.”

Speed reduction, influencing driver behaviour (distraction) and  designing roads to slow cars  are the three key elements to reducing road violence. I have also suggested that pedestrians take the European approach and wear some type of reflectivity walking in our low light winter evenings as a further preventative precaution. Why? Because until the speed reductions, road design and driver behaviour changes happen it is one more  way  vulnerable road user can be safer-visible  for drivers that are going too fast and  not paying attention.    Motordom dominance of our streets must change.

Reducing speeds neighbourhood wide to 30 km/h area wide would  mean that 90 per cent of vulnerable road users would survive a crash. Delta has the opportunity to do this, making streets without sidewalks safer for all road users, without the cost of expensive infrastructure. We know that driver behaviour and marked inattention must be addressed. We must make road violence a repulsive act, and sentence it appropriately for what it is doing-needlessly maiming and killing the most vulnerable.

For 2017, Chief Dubord says “This leads me to my challenge to you: together, let’s make Delta’s roads the safest in B.C. Put away the distractions, slow down, dress appropriately and pay attention to your surroundings. And hold your family and friends accountable to this too. As a part of the Delta Police Strategic Plan, we have a goal of zero fatal motor vehicle accidents. As we complete the last year of our current plan, I want to accomplish this. With your help, we will.”

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City rediscovers walking, Society

“Road Violence” Killing Pedestrians, and Why Slower Speeds Are Crucial

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Patrick Brown is a Toronto based criminal injury lawyer-and he was recently on CBC Radio’s Ontario Today discussing something we at Price Tags have pondered-Where the heck is the criminal  sentencing and consequences when at fault drivers maim and kill pedestrians and cyclists?

Mr. Brown maintains that in Ontario “special status” has been given to drivers, meaning that it is circumstantial whether causing a fatality is a crime.  “Certainly if there’s drinking involved or if there’s an individual in a hit and run or there’s racing and I would also consider distracted driving a crime and that means there was intent to do a behavior that was reckless and careless and resulted in loss of a life”.

But what happens with drivers that say that their gas pedal gets stuck, or other excuses? “There’s a responsibility when you’re driving the car that you don’t act recklessly, that you make sure that your sandal does not get caught in the accelerator and that you prevent your vehicle from crossing lanes and killing someone. We have to have a system that reacts to these situations in a different manner than we’re presently watching. Erica Stark was standing on a sidewalk when the car went up over the curb and killed her. The response to that by our system was a $1,000 fine.”

Road violence is surprising in that the maiming and killing of vulnerable road users does not have serious consequences for the driver. Mr. Brown notes that he has seen instances where a seriously injured pedestrian is given a jaywalking ticket while the car driver responsible for the injuries is never charged. But, under Ontario law, if a crosswalk is more than 100 metres away, a pedestrian can legally cross a road. “That’s the systemic type of outlook that happens at times in relation to drivers and pedestrians. “

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Patrick Brown sees speed reduction as absolutely necessary— “speed kills and is the number one factor in these pedestrians getting hit and killed and it would make a significant difference if we reduced the speed limits. And most importantly, vulnerable road user laws — these have already been passed in at least 10 of the states down south, and these laws say that if you hit a pedestrian, a cyclist, somebody using a mobility aid, anybody who’s vulnerable, doesn’t have that protection of airbags and collapsible steering wheels, that you’re going to be subject to added penalties on top of what you’re already going to face.”

After practicing this area of law for 20 years, Brown says that there is  “a repetitive result,’ where individuals who are clearly negligent, careless and reckless and kill and seriously injure people” have been given a slap on the wrist.”  This needs to change, and it needs to change now. In Oregon, hitting a vulnerable road user results in a licence suspension, a mandatory driving course and up to 200 hours of community service, and a fine or jail. Mr. Brown maintains  “A $500 fine to an individual may mean nothing, It’s like going out for dinner for a night. The fine is less than the dent in the car. But you actually make them proactively have to do something and reflect on their conduct, then you’re sending a message out of deterrence to all society — you have to pay particular attention when you’re near these individuals”.

In the 21st century it is time for us to treat road violence as a crime, require mandatory slowing of speeds neighbourhood wide, and deter driver inattention and behaviour. How do we ensure that all road users can safely and sustainably use our roads and streets?

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Championing Micro Mobility & Walkable Places