“We continually flame road violence as an outcome of personal choices yet we all know very well it’s the result of our cities choices,” Tom Flood said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“This is an unacceptable ad; victim blaming road violence is not the city I believe in,” architect Toon Dreessen said.
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Statistics provided by Gonthier shows 25 per cent of all fatal and major injury collisions on Ottawa’s roads involve pedestrians. The memo provided data on collisions between 2017 and 2021 on Ottawa roads:
- 29 per cent of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian was crossing a road midblock (away from an intersection)
- 23 per cent of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian with the right-of-way was struck at an intersection by a left turning driver
- 11 per cent of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian who did not have the right-of-way was struck by a vehicle travelling straight through an intersection
If bears kept killing people in our cities, would we do something about the bears, or would we blame people for being mauled?
We need to design our streets to be safer, which involves incorporating traffic calming measures so that drivers will choose to drive at speeds that are safe for everybody.
With infrastructure for pedestrians to regularly cross major traffic arteries, whether that be regular lights, bridges, etc.
Or, hear me out, the major arteries are designed for people, not cars. Trains, busses, and metros instead of highways and bypasses.
You don’t need cars to move people. That’s a design choice that cities make.
This is a bit of naiive fantasy. How are you going to transport a 90 year old woman from the train station to her house?
You could design the main arteries to all be trains, but ultimately you still need cars for last mile transportation.
Buses, electric wheelchairs etc.
Besides the fact that 90 year olds are notoriously terrible drivers and cause quite the number of accidents due to poor reflexes.
Buses, electric wheelchairs etc.
Buses don’t go to a house, they go to a bus stop, and the point is that there are people in society too sick and frail to walk a block. You’re not about to put a 90+ year old in an electric wheelchair and tell them to wheel home from the bus stop in the rain or snow.
Yeah cars suck, but it’s deluded fantasy to ignore their clear application. How are you getting your kids and all their sports gear to practice in the winter? How are you transporting building materials to your house or condo through snow?
End of the day if you design bikes to handle that kind of stuff you’ll quickly end up adding more wheels to help balance, a roof to cover you in inclement weather, and more power and suspension to help drive it all, and you’ve suddenly designed a car.
How many frail people unable to walk a block are there? Taxis absolutely suffice for your situation, if there is heavy rain or snow fall. In all other weather, they will be able to wheel themselves back home - if they’re unable to operate a wheelchair they probably don’t need much transport anywhere either.
How are kids going to sport practice? Ever heard of bicycles? Heavy equipment is usually short at the sport facility, everything else fits in a bag. Sure, heavy rain absolutely sucks on a bicycle but wearing a jacket and rain resistant pants is enough for usual amounts of rain. Snow isn’t that bad either, as long as the roads are properly salted. And even then, you can drive on icy roads with your bicycle as long as you’re careful.
Source: I frequently drove 5km to school and 6km to sports practice as a child. The worst thing was the difference in altitude, not the weather (there were two 12% inclines on either way).
How many frail people unable to walk a block are there?
Literally every single person at some point in their lives.
Taxis absolutely suffice for your situation
And guess what taxis need? Roads and infrastructure for cars!!! And we’re back to my original point already.
Heavy equipment is usually short at the sport facility, everything else fits in a bag.
Lmao, oh yeah, hockey rinks just have warehouses filled with hundreds and hundreds of hockey bags waiting for their owners /s.
This is simply not true for any sports teams that plays in multiple locations around a city, read: all the competitive ones.
Snow isn’t that bad either, as long as the roads are properly salted. And even then, you can drive on icy roads with your bicycle as long as you’re careful
This is abelist nonsense.
Congrats on being a fit young person, yeah it’s easy for us to get around. That is not the case for all and it’s absurd to suggest that cars are not going to be part of our last mile transportation infrastructure.