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Road Safety & Vision Zero Plan

If vehicles leave the roadway often enough that we need street lights to have breakaway bases to keep vehicle occupants safe, how can it be safe for pedestrians and transit riders to sit, stand or walk in that same space?

The answer is, it’s not. [Even though you could argue that pedestrians have breakaway bases themselves…]

From 2012 to 2020, there were 179 (reported) collisions where a vehicle left the roadway in urban areas in Manitoba, according to Manitoba Public Insurance collision statistics. In 36% of those, someone was injured. In 6% of them, someone died.

But those weren’t accidents. Traffic engineers designed urban streets that required a clear zone, designed breakaway bases for the infrastructure in those clear zones due to the expected frequency of collisions, and then placed their professional seal on a plan that puts people, sidewalks, bus stops and businesses in the very same clear zones.

Of course people get hurt. Of course people die. That’s the design.

As well-known traffic safety advocate Tom Flood has said, “these aren’t accidents, these are results.”
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1356255025383747585
And the only reason it’s not even worse is because of congestion. Congestion slows traffic to a speed where clear zones shrink to zero, which solves this entire problem for us. Unfortunately, the traffic engineering profession seems to have taken it as its raison d’être to alleviate congestion, which just puts people back into the clear zone, and back into mortal danger.

But, try talking to a traffic engineer about making sure people aren’t forced to walk, wait for the bus, or access local businesses while in the clear zone, and you’ll get blank stares.

You could call it unethical. You could call it gross negligence. I might even go as far as to call it sociopathic.

And it is probably at least some of those things.

But it’s not like there’s no solution here. A common suggestion is to line the sidewalks with bollards.

And that would work… for the pedestrians and transit riders. But remember the whole reason for the breakaway bases? That vehicles smashing into immovable objects at high speeds is dangerous for the occupants of those vehicles?

Yeah, simply installing a bunch of bollards and calling it a day is just shifting the risk of death from people outside vehicles to those inside vehicles. That’s hardly ethical either.

But we could design our streets for slower speeds, just like congestion has shown us works. That’s actually what the World Health Organization recommends, and not just in residential areas. They recommend maximum speeds of 30 km/h wherever “people and traffic mix“. It’s a policy that recognizes that there are places for high speeds, and there are places for slow speeds. And the places for slow speeds are wherever people walk, live, work and play, which has advantages far beyond just safety, such as economic activity, climate action, livability, and as we’ve measured here before many times, financial sustainability for the City.

To do otherwise is to ask people to spend time in the clear zone, literally putting their lives at risk just to wait for a bus, or buy a jug of milk, or walk to the dentist. An ask so egregious, that any engineer who would agree to affix their seal to that should lose their license to practice. Yet somehow they don’t.

Because most people don’t know about clear zones and breakaway bases. So there’s no one to call them out on it.

But now you know.

So the next time you’re walking down the street, or waiting for a bus, or walking up to a local shop, and you walk by a pole with a breakaway base, remember that means you’re standing where out-of-control cars have been designated to go: in the clear zone.
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danger-bus-stop.jpeg

Knowing this, you can choose to stay silent and be complicit, as the City spends $50,000 on marketing to attract more people to stand in the clear zone take the bus. You can choose to say nothing as the City prepares to spend $10 million on amenity upgrades to get more people to walk, sit, eat, drink, shop and spend more time in the clear zone in public spaces Downtown.

Or you can choose to speak up about the deadly design of our streets for anyone outside of a vehicle. You can’t be for climate action without addressing this. You can’t be for active transportation without addressing this. You can’t be for Downtown, for local business, for economic recovery, for municipal solvency, without addressing this.

So talk to your friends about it. Talk to your family, your colleagues, your Councillor. Just as importantly, talk to any candidate seeking your vote in this fall’s election. This abhorrent practice has to end, and ending it starts with you.

Finally, one last request for those of you who work in the media: consider changing how you report on this stuff in the future.
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vehicle-crash-system.jpeg
 
Isn't it a good thing that bus shelters are "breakaway", to protect the motorists and the people inside motor vehicles from harm. Ignore the people on the sidewalk or inside the bus shelter, they don't count.

satcrash1g.png
From link.

scarborough-bus-shelter-crash.JPG
From link.

College-and-Crawford-crash-4-e1563481235510.jpg
From link.

Sorry, putting up bollards will be too expensive, since it may damage motor vehicles and only save lives.
From link.
6.1_CS_9163_01272012_0_0.jpg

6.1_CS_9170_01272012_0_0.jpg

6.1_CS_9241_01272012_0_0.jpg
 
Remember Progress Avenue & Markham Road in Scarborough. Where two pedestrians were killed in December, 2019. See link.

This is an image from Google Maps Street View (dated May 2021). From link. No real improvements for pedestrians.

1650842607694.png

Note how the guardrail protects the trees and valley from pedestrians who may wonder off the sidewalk into the hill behind the guardrail.

No protection from motorists driving at the alleged 50 km/h posted speed limit (insert laugh track here). No protection for the people at the bus stop nor inside the bus shelter. The bus shelter and bust stop sign will "breakaway" to prevent serious damage to the occupants of the possible motor vehicle, since that is "very important". People are unimportant.
 
I know we try to keep the clear zone clear. But bollards around bus stops is reasonable balance of risks. We leave fire hydrants in the clear zone and I doubt they are breakaway.
 
Fire hydrants are designed to be breakaway by virtue of the flange connection between the visible part ('bonnet assembly') and the riser pipe. Don't ask me the energy parameters - I assume it is governed by the grade of bolts used.

It strikes me that having breakaway protection bollards would be rather pointless.
 
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lenaitch said:
It strikes me that having breakaway protection bollards would be rather pointless.
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One has to think there is middle ground and win-win possible here.
Installing lethal barriers that kill or maim motorists strikes me as just as perverse as letting cars fly into bus shelters unimpeded. Are we that hostile to motorists?
The point of the good old highway guard rail is to redirect the energy and lessen the impact on the occupants.
I don’t have any expertise here, but there may be a solution that works more like a guard rail than a solid post.
Jersey barriers aren’t pretty, but they have their place.... whereas bollards may look nicer but not work as well.
And, we need snow removal strategies that can handle whatever barriers we implement…. or the thing will fail in other ways.

- Paul
 
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crs1026 said:
One has to think there is middle ground and win-win possible here.
Installing lethal barriers that kill or maim motorists strikes me as just as perverse as letting cars fly into bus shelters unimpeded. Are we that hostile to motorists?
The point of the good old highway guard rail is to redirect the energy and lessen the impact on the occupants.
I don’t have any expertise here, but there may be a solution that works more like a guard rail than a solid post.
Jersey barriers aren’t pretty, but they have their place.... whereas bollards may look nicer but not work as well.
And, we need snow removal strategies that can handle whatever barriers we implement…. or the thing will fail in other ways.

- Paul
Click to expand...
Traffic barricades perform a combination of either re-directing and/or absorbing kinetic energy. The faster they do this, generally less space is needed, the greater the risk to the soft, squishy occupants of the vehicle but less risk to the soft, squishy people they are intended to protect (not counting flying bits that are still exhibiting kinetic energy). The more gradually and less lethally they do it, generally more space is needed, which may not always be available in an urban setting.
 
They talk about a few kinds, but the only kind I've seen in real life that they refer to is the pink delivery robot. Those are pretty short - maybe 2 feet tall at most.
 
nfitz said:
How tall are these things? I'd think if they aren't 3-4 feet tall, then people tripping over them is going to be an issue.
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AFAIK, MTO has proposed regulations for maximum weight/width/speed but no minimums or height limit. So they could be 10 foot tall or 1 foot tall.

Edit:
  • No height limit, a 125 kg maximum weight, and a 74 cm maximum width for all MUDs, except automated snow plows which have no proposed weight and dimension restrictions;
  • A 10 km/hr maximum speed on sidewalks and a 20 km/hr maximum speed on shoulders of
    roads or bike lanes
  • Mandatory audible signals to alert those nearby;
  • A requirement for reflectors and lights, with lights to be lit if operated between sunset and
    sunrise;
  • A requirement to yield to pedestrians (no details on how); and
 
evandyk said:
They talk about a few kinds, but the only kind I've seen in real life that they refer to is the pink delivery robot. Those are pretty short - maybe 2 feet tall at most.
Click to expand...
Having ripped my now infected leg open recently, just by tripping over something on the edge of the sidewalk, I wonder how this is going to work on downtown sidewalks.

It's kind of like stepping on the cat - but more likely to be walking much faster. You just don't notice stuff in your peripheral vision at your feet when you are trying to pay attention to moving people, and traffic lights.
 
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