Toronto’s new road safety plan not ambitious enough

Toronto’s newly announced road safety plan may aim to reduce pedestrian and cyclist deaths in Toronto over the next 10 years, but its goals are not nearly ambitious enough, Toronto critical injury lawyer Patrick Brown tells Metro News.

As the article notes, the plan — announced by Mayor John Tory and Coun. Jaye Robinson — aims for a 20 per cent reduction in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities by 2026.

Brown, a partner with McLeish Orlando LLP, says this goal is “ridiculous.”

“Shouldn’t the goal be to reduce fatalities by 100 per cent?” he says in the article. “I mean what are you going to tell the other 80 per cent?”

2015 was a deadly year

As Metro News reports, there have been 59 pedestrian and cyclist deaths in Toronto in the last 18 months, and 2015 marked one of the deadliest years in recent memory.

City proposals to address the issue include intersection redesigns, speed limit reductions, public awareness campaigns, as well as the creation of 25 pedestrian corridors across the city, where speed limits and signal timings would change to prioritize pedestrian safety, says the article.

However, Brown explains, “Until a driver’s licence is seen as a privilege and not a right and our laws reflect the obvious vulnerability of pedestrians, cyclists and the disabled, the horrific and unnecessary carnage on our streets will continue.”