The issues of pedestrian safety and a noticeable rise in traffic fatalities in Vancouver have once again landed on dinner table newspapers, smartphone screens, and the conciousness of people everywhere in the Lower Mainland, and Vancouver Island. In the last two weeks, several people have been killed in different incidents, from Victoria to Surrey. Behind each statistic is a person, a human being, each one innocently going about their daily lives, simply crossing a street to get to wherever they where going.
In fact, pedestrians in Vancouver are being mowed down in record numbers, as shown in the following CBC News story:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/12/05/bc-vancouver-pedestrian-deaths.html
But contrary to the article’s statements, this condition is occurring in many places, not just Vancouver. And as much as their concern for pedestrian safety is noted & appreciated, our Mayor & Council are not tackling the problem from the right perspective.
If they’d spend more time outside, walking and travelling up & down our streets, they might see what I see, & realize their ideas won’t work. They’ve already spent a pile of money on more signals and intersection design and so forth. It’s not working. The result is simply more congestion, & rising motorist frustration. And their answer is to borrow more money and repeat the same behaviours which have already proven unsuccessful in bringing down the death rate on our streets.
Aside from the fact traffic safety is being impacted by too much traffic in confined spaces, because of rapidly rising population densities, the central problem to tackle is motorist incompetence & the alarming lack of police presence.
Judging by their behaviours behind the wheel, a huge proportion of drivers today apparently don’t think they are obligated to put down their smartphones, much less yield to red lights & pedestrians. What’s more shocking is that these are fundamental rules you don’t even need to possess a driver’ s licence to know. They whiz by pedestrians of all ages, with very narrow margins between human flesh & thousands of pounds of vehicle, travelling usually over posted speed limits. And drivers do this seemingly without a care in the world, their faces showing no emotion or recognition of how close to the pedestrian they actually are. This is the driver culture out there.
Of course, pedestrians may not be entirely blameless in the chaos on the streets. Every day, countless numbers of people dart into traffic, cross mid-block, or flagrantly disobey traffic signals while crossing streets. While these careless actions add to the urban mayhem, and heighten frustrations of many, they represent a relatively small threat to the welfare of the motoring public.
Defensive driving , however, appears to be a myth, as if it’s something taught in driver education courses, but forgotten as soon as one acquires their driver’s licence. Most people, it appears, regard a driver’s licence as a right, when in fact it is a privilege. The many obligations associated with possessing a driver’s licence in B.C. too often are forgotten, buried by complacency & “busy” lifestyles. The main objective of motorists seems to be a primitive, selfish one – to get to their destination as quickly and as easily as they can, and everyone else is viewed as little more than minor annoyances and obstacles that should not be in their way. Generally speaking, the rules of the road , as laid out in the Motor Vehicle Act, appear not to apply to them, these very important people.
Worse, the more lights and fancy crosswalks they see, the more they view pedestrians in other situations as out of order, and crossing at their own risk.
It’s no exaggeration to say pedestrians seem to live in a very dangerous world out there, one that nobody else really could understand unless they would literally take the time to walk as I do.
The Vancouver Police Department appears unable to designate a meaningful contingent of officers to patrol intersections, which explains why the Police are so rarely present, therefore it is up to the our civic government to step up their involvement and give these issues due attention.
Sadly, until the relevant authorities act to correct population densities spiralling upwards out of control, a motorist mentality that says their driving convenience supercedes & supplants all other considerations,, such as the lives of other human beings, the inevitable results are obvious, yet still preventable: more human lives will be lost, and more people will unexpectedly lose their loved ones, their sons, daughter, their grandparents, their parents.
If this is not the appropriate time to act, it is then fair to posit the following question, of those who would like to be called our “leaders”: how many more lives must be violently, needlessly, & prematurely cut short, before action takes place?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/12/05/bc-vancouver-pedestrian-deaths.html
silvercharm 