The street in question
looks like this near the community centre. It's a typical overly wide residential collector road, with each lane being a ludicrous 5-6 m in width. Some residential streets are even wider. This will be an interesting lawsuit to watch. Since there's so much evidence that the way a street is designed determines how safe it is, is a city that uses dangerous road design guilty of negligence?
I feel as though there are several legitimate questions that a court should examine and it will be interesting to see whether/how they do so.
1) Does the physical design of the road comport with the stated speed limit as presumed guidance for intended use?
1b) Understanding that the desire will be to engineer some margin error, such that driving 1km/ph over the limit doesn't greatly reduce drivability, how much of a margin of error, or over-engineering is reasonable?
2) Is the stated speed limit reasonable, given both stated intentional use, and likely intentional use. (for instance, the intersection shown is directly across from a school, but no crosswalk is shown, while pedestrians crossing here may not be
an explicit intended use, it is, surely a foreseeable one. If undesirable, does the City have an obligation to prevent such a crossing if it is not facilitating it? (guardrails, obstructive median etc?)
3) Are the turning radii and other road geometry elements of intersecting streets consistent with safe/reasonable use; is the speed limit/road geometry reasonable given the roads with which it is intersecting?
4) What level of clear guidance is required to pedestrians/cyclists and drivers to reasonably ensure safety? I note the absence of any 'stop line' on the intersecting side street, and no visible crosswalk indicating either where
pedestrians (or child cyclists) should cross; or where motorists approaching said intersection should anticipate said crossing.
In respect of the above, a photo essay:
Principle street:
You can see the school to the right, the photo is taken from a non-signalized intersection, looking east, is that tiny yellow sign sufficient to indicate a pedestrian crossing? Are the wide lanes, straight road, and official crossing-free envrionment consistent with a 40km/ph speed limit? Is that limit reasonable in front of the school?
Intersecting Street:
Is the absence of a stop line reasonable? Is the absence of a marked pedestrian ROW/Crossing reasonable? Observe that there are no sidewalks on either side of the road. Is that reasonable?
(regrettably, adding sidewalks behind the curb on either side of this street would result in the removal of dozens of mature trees. It appears to be plausible to add a sidewalk within the ROW on one side, or alternatively to consider a shared street design; though the latter in so auto-centric an area may be problematic.
Is it reasonable that there is no crossing in the form of a crosswalk, a bumpout, or differential pavement from this street to the school across the way?
Is that sightline at the corner reasonable (left side of image)?
Intersection from where the first pic was taken:
At least there's a stop sign and stop line??
Aside from the extraordinary width/girth of a stop-signed intersection.............
Note the absence of any zebra striped crosswalk. Is that reasonable?
Are the turnii radii reasonable?
Some things for a judge to consider.
****
My take: Most of what I have shown is not reasonable in my judgement.
While any ruling here must have a pragmatic element to it, I would like to see a judicial order to the effect that a municipality must exercise due care to ensure that any sanctioned use of a road is reasonably safe for that road user.
-That a stated speed must be supported by a road design reasonably consistent with said speed.
-That a speed limit must be set which reflects the safety of all road users in light of sanctioned uses.
-That a foreseeable use against which no action is taken is generally a sanctioned use.
