A pedestrian has never killed a motorist by hitting him. The opposite happens all too often. Yet we continue to design cities and streets for cars, not pedestrians.
Quebecers are mourning the death of a 7-year-old girl hit by a motorist as she walked to school on Tuesday in the borough of Ville-Marie. Last July, it was a 2-year-old child who lost his life, hit by a motorist at the corner of avenue des Récollets and rue Fleury. Her mother had been seriously injured.
Each time, politicians, with tremolo in their voices and tears in their eyes, implore people to be careful.
But what are we waiting for to reverse the balance of power between pedestrians and motorists?
For 48 hours, there are countless people who say that this accident was foreseeable. The bridge-tunnel construction site increased through traffic in the Centre-Sud district, near the Jacques-Cartier bridge. Motorists, in a hurry and distracted, cross the streets at full speed because Waze Where Google Maps suggested they take this shortcut. Quick quick quick. We are all SO busy driving bigger and bigger vehicles. And what is the reflex of the parents when an accident occurs? Driving their child in a car, thus adding cars to the streets…
Contrary to what Premier François Legault said on Wednesday, it is not true that people respect the speed limit in school zones. Last October, the CAA revealed the results of observations in two school zones, in Montreal and Quebec. His findings were chilling: almost all of the drivers (92% and 96%) had exceeded the speed limit in the areas observed.
You only need to be a pedestrian to see that the phenomenon can be observed almost everywhere around schools. And what about stops at intersections? Shorter and shorter. Motorists almost seem to be doing a favor to pedestrians, who often have to hasten their pace for fear of getting their feet rolled over.
However, there are solutions to calm car traffic: adding protrusions, speed bumps, one-way streets to divert traffic, etc.
This is the approach favored by the former mayor of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, Luc Ferrandez. At the time, it was almost coated with tar and feathers…
The Montreal Urban Ecology Center oversees school street pilot projects. It consists in closing the street of a school between 15 and 45 minutes, at the beginning and at the end of classes, an approach that gives convincing results: in Ahuntsic, for example, we have noted a 30% reduction in cars around from school and 20% modal shift (i.e. a change from driving to walking). And 95% support for the project.
It is necessary to multiply these street-schools which also exist in certain European and American cities.
We should also review the design of our streets. In California, the Department of Transportation adheres to the Complete Streets policy. Whenever it designs or renovates road infrastructure, it must do so with the safety of pedestrians and cyclists in mind.
In the late 1990s, Sweden came up with the Vision Zero approach, which has since been adopted by the City of Montreal. Objective of this approach: zero deaths and zero serious injuries on the roads. Montreal would like to achieve it by 2040. We are still a long way off.
Even if we observe a downward trend in the number of pedestrians who lost their lives in accidents between 2016 and 2021, the SAAQ’s partial results for 2022 are hardly reassuring. As of September, 39 pedestrians had died in an accident, an increase of 14.7% compared to all of 2021.
We must extend the Vision Zero approach to all of Quebec and make it a real priority. Drivers need to be brought to heel.
In 2030, a quarter of the Quebec population will be aged 65 and over. This means more pedestrians who will move more slowly on the streets. Will they have to give up active transportation and stay home for fear of being run over? It is high time to change our vision of mobility, which relies too much on the fluidity of automobile traffic – an impossible challenge if the number of vehicles continues to increase – and not enough on the safety of the most vulnerable.