(Montreal) Representatives of civil society are demanding the implementation of a road safety strategy by the Quebec government to better protect vulnerable users traveling on the network.
During a press conference held Wednesday morning in the Ville-Marie district, the organizations Piétons Québec, CAA-Québec and Vivre en ville denounced the “inertia” of the provincial government. They called for the implementation of measures to promote the safety of pedestrians in particular, whose number of deaths has increased over the past year.
According to the partial road safety report of the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ) for 2022, 39 pedestrians had died in an accident as of September, an increase of 14.7% compared to the whole of the year 2021.
Sandrine Cabana-Degani, Executive Director of Piétons Québec, stressed that road safety was a “national issue”, and that a change in culture had to take place without delay.
She recalled that in 2018, Quebec had committed to adopting a strategy based on the Vision Zero approach, but that it was still pending.
The Vision Zero approach, first adopted by Sweden in 1997, is based on the idea that it is unacceptable for people to be injured or killed while traveling on the road network. Dozens of cities around the world have implemented this philosophy in their practices, such as New York, Vancouver, London and Canberra.