A chance to reimagine road safety By: Brent Bellamy Posted: 2:00 AM CST Monday, Dec. 19, 2022

Opinion

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This article was published 18/12/2022 (737 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Drivers have killed 11 pedestrians on Winnipeg streets in 2022.

The language of that sentence might sound jarring, because we rarely humanize a driver’s role in vehicle collisions. We more commonly use object-based language that describes a vehicle doing something rather than a driver: a car jumped the curb and hit a pedestrian.

This ambiguity is uniquely reserved for those operating motor vehicles, as we would never say a bike injured a pedestrian. We would say a cyclist did.

This forgiving language reveals a deeply ingrained bias in how we perceive road users, and is a natural extension of the cultural dominance vehicles have in our urban mobility. City streets are viewed primarily as conduits for vehicles, with pedestrians and cyclists considered guests on streets made for cars.

This public bias pushes planners, engineers and politicians to prioritize vehicle speed over pedestrian safety in street design. There’s a sense of inevitability to this year’s record number of pedestrian fatalities that mutes public reaction, almost as if it’s a price that must be paid.

On average in Winnipeg, every second day a pedestrian or cyclist is injured in a vehicle collision seriously enough to file a police report. Every third day a pedestrian or cyclist is sent to hospital. Public response to these staggering statistics often seeks blame, asking if the pedestrian was on their phone, or if the cyclist rolled through a stop sign, believing that if we can identify personal fault, we will not be forced to re-evaluate our car-first priorities.

To the family of a person killed in a vehicle collision, it doesn’t matter who is to blame. The question we should be asking is how do we ensure that when a mistake is made, no matter who makes it, someone doesn’t pay for it with their life?

Pedestrian and cyclist fatalities are not inevitable, but the solution requires a cultural shift in the way planners, policy-makers and the public think about streets and how we use them. If we are going to blame anyone for collision deaths, our collective fingers should point directly at the streets we have designed to encourage them.

This is where we must start looking for solutions. Cyclists and pedestrians are not protected by air bags and 1,000 kilograms of steel. The only way to provide protection to vulnerable road users is to build it into the streets themselves.

Cyclists and pedestrians are not protected by air bags and 1,000 kilograms of steel. The only way to provide protection to vulnerable road users is to build it into the streets themselves.

To do this, many cities have adopted Vision Zero, a global urban-road safety initiative that promotes physical changes to street design, reduced speed limits, data tracking, enforcement and education. The Vision Zero strategy has allowed Helsinki, Finland, and Oslo, Norway, to bring pedestrian and cyclist fatalities down from more than 20 annually in the 1990s to zero in 2019.

Edmonton became the first Canadian city to adopt Vision Zero in 2015 and has seen all vehicle fatalities decrease by 50 per cent, and pedestrian fatalities by nearly 30 per cent.

Last summer, city council adopted the Winnipeg Road Safety Strategic Action Plan, an inspired document, based on Vision Zero principles, that outlines comprehensive strategies to change the culture of road safety in our city. The plan includes two striking maps that identify locations of pedestrian and cycling injury-collisions across the city, painting a clear picture of Winnipeg’s road safety.

Not surprisingly, they reveal that collisions occur most where higher volumes of pedestrians are on streets designed to prioritize vehicle speeds.

Downtown Winnipeg, with its wide, one-way streets and narrow sidewalks designed to funnel commuters out of the city centre as quickly as possible, is the most glaring example. High numbers of collisions are also found across the city on what were once commercial neighbourhood streets but have over time been transformed into pseudo commuter highways such McPhillips, Main and Marion streets. When Kelvin Street became Henderson Highway in 1963, it received the name “highway” to clearly indicate where its new priority lay.

Osborne Street is another stark example of this condition. Perceived as a pedestrian shopping street, its primary design function is to funnel vehicles through Osborne Village to the suburbs. To increase traffic flow, trees were removed, sidewalks were narrowed and car lanes widened.

All of this makes pedestrian safety a decided afterthought. We often refer to collisions as “accidents,” but it’s not an accident that so many pedestrians are hit on streets such as Osborne. The way we’ve designed them makes it inevitable.

We often refer to collisions as “accidents,” but it’s not an accident that so many pedestrians are hit on streets such as Osborne. The way we’ve designed them makes it inevitable.

The Winnipeg Road Safety Strategic Action Plan identifies 67 actions to change this. These include installing traffic-calming elements such as speed humps, raised crosswalks and street narrowing; policy reviews of speed limits, one-way streets and right turns on red lights; and construction of protective elements including bike lanes, improved signals and curb extensions at intersections.

The action plan is thorough and transformational, but to be successful it must be funded and supported by government.

Edmonton successfully reduced traffic fatalities by directing more than $20 million per year of red-light camera revenue toward its strategic plan. It also recently committed $100 million to building protected bike lanes that will transform the city’s mobility.

If Winnipeg wants to be just as serious about saving lives and building a culture of road safety, the evidence will not be found in another policy paper. It will be found in the budgets that support it.

Brent Bellamy is creative director at Number TEN Architectural Group.