“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
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.