Mutual respect will keep roads safe

Re Five ways to make our roads safer in 2016, Opinion Jan. 14 Authors Albert Koehl and Michael Black put forth several recommendations that seem impractical, unworkable and unlikely to be effective in significantly affecting traffic fatalities.

The reality is pedestrians, drivers, cyclists and all manner of vehicles interact without incident hundreds of thousands of times each day. This includes interactions where mistakes are made, poor judgment is shown and violations of assorted laws take place.

The number of incidents that result in fatalities, or even any injuries, is a tiny fraction of a single per cent of the overall movement of people and vehicular traffic.

By and large, travelling throughout Toronto, on foot or on wheels, is safe. With a growing population, staying roughly the same as previous years is actually an improvement.

The authors seem to think that safety can be legislated. The truth is, virtually no incident resulting in a fatality is deliberate. They result from imperfect human beings being in a hurry, having an off day, travelling in poor weather, being distracted or not paying sufficient attention, cutting corners, legal or otherwise, or just doing something that they don’t have the skill to accomplish.

Respect for each other in the use of our streets is the best solution to fatal traffic incidents, and even those best intentions won’t stop them all. Terry Kushnier, Scarborough I keep hearing on the news about the new crosswalk rules and the penalties that motorists can face. That is all well and good and hopefully will lead to more safety and better habits. However, the bigger problem as I see it is that the onus is always placed on the vehicle driver and never on the pedestrian.

Will the new rules take into account all the times that pedestrians ignore the flashing traffic control and set foot on the pavement to access the crosswalk even though the pedestrian traffic signal has begun flashing to indicate the light is about to change? And if so, what will the penalties be against pedestrians that do this in violation of the signals?

It’s high time we made this a level playing field. Joseph Panchyshyn, Thornhill Sadly, an old joke still applies — if you want to kill someone in Toronto, use a car. Hamish Wilson, Toronto