Toronto seems to have a pedestrian or cyclist injured or killed every day. This is a historic deja vu for Toronto: between 1939 and 1940, the city saw a similar number of pedestrians and cyclists — particularly children — die on its streets due to the same cause. Automobiles.
Torontonians today hear the same platitudes as their older cousins: cyclists and pedestrians need to defend their self-interests actively. In other words, pedestrians and cyclists will have to find ways of protecting themselves on busy roads with dangerous motor vehicles.
It’s odd that Toronto’s policymakers, and even its enforcement officers, can only rehash an idea that has failed in the past. The deaths of children in the past give us an insight into Toronto’s unimaginative street safety approach.
Toronto’s political leaders are solely responsible for this intolerant street policy. Since the 1910s, they have been virtually bound to the automobile. This makes them unable to make any policy.
The best way to improve pedestrian and cyclist safety is by banning cars. Andrew Gook/ Unsplash
It is only by prohibiting automobiles that we can guarantee the safety of pedestrians and cyclists on streets dominated today by motor vehicles. What can municipal leaders do or say if this idea is impossible?
Since 1910, Torontonians have been aware of the dangers that automobilization poses to civic life. As they watched their children die in the streets right outside their homes, they learned about the traumatic effects of motor vehicles.
After the First World War, children died by the dozen at the hands of motorists. (90 between 1919-1921). Toronto’s children suffered in the 1930s and 1920s.
Newspapers in the city described almost daily and gruesomely how motor vehicles harmed and injured the “little kids of the street,” shattered skulls and broke bones, and flayed or crushed them to their deaths. Toronto’s preschoolers were dragged and beaten in their playground and the street by motor vehicles. Many of them, who were only three years old, did not have any recourse. The government never protected anyone.
From horses to cars
The motor-caused trauma was caused by a radical change in the Victorian street’s social function. The Victorian streets of Toronto grew organically from the walkers, leisurely horse traffic, and leisurely omnibuses. Here, an integrated system of outdoor living was created, which included the entire street, from curb to curb, sidewalk, gutter, and roadway.
Bicyclists did “scorch” newly-asphalted fin de siecle street, and they sometimes ran down children or adults in the first modernized cases of hit-and-run crime. But for the vast majority, it was a safe place. In 1920, as motor vehicle traffic and ownership grew, pedestrian, bike, and automobile accidents became more common.
As riders debarked, automobiles raced across intersections, sped on both sides of the road, and challenged streetcars. They jumped curbs, collided (and walked into buildings) with pedestrians. They raced at level crossings and frequently operated erratically.
The time-space compression caused by fast-moving traffic is difficult to judge for pedestrians and drivers. Children, in particular, struggle to adapt to this new street culture.
The Ontario Safety League’s campaign to promote pedestrian safety in the year 1923 is shown here, with examples of inappropriate behaviors from both pedestrians and drivers. City of Toronto Archives
Foot traffic increased as the population grew to hundreds of thousands. The sidewalks were crowded with people waiting for public transportation, marching to stores, schools, and churches, and lining up at the entrances of shops and stores.
It was inevitable that pedestrians and cars would end up in a crisis. The city and the province did not know how to stop someone from walking in front of a moving vehicle or prevent a motor car from hitting a cyclist.
“The Chariot of Prosperity”
From a policy standpoint, the real problem was the economic importance of automobiles. The value of the car was evident to everyone, especially to Toronto’s business people and politicians. It was “the chariot for prosperity” and “the perfect machine.” It quickly “achieved the rightful prerogative of all other modes of transportation.”
The Globe called the motor-driven vehicle “the king of cars,” and declared that “the motorized car has earned its place in a civilized world.” It was ironic to ignore the fact that this paragon for civility caused deadly conflict with pedestrians, including children playing tag or chasing butterflies.
What did Toronto’s policymakers actually do to prevent cars from killing kids on the street? Nothing.
The City Council rejected both the 1920 and 1928 motions and deputations that sought to ban motorized vehicles from streets where children were playing. Between 1927 and 1935, hundreds of children died in the streets.
Leopold Macaulay of Ontario’s Highways Ministry, who had been responsible for the highways in Ontario, said that after three years of horrendous deaths — 30 toddlers each year — he couldn’t “help but shudder” at this “needless mangling” of children.
Macaulay, misunderstanding his role in the solution to policy, believed that “it would seem completely unnecessary” to ask drivers to protect these children. He continued: “The instinct for humanity should be enough, but these figures prove that it isn’t.”
The only policy that has ever been devised in order to protect people and cyclists on automobilized highways was self-preservation. The Ontario Safety League referred to this as “the necessity to guard against accidents by abstaining in contributory negligence.”
Look both ways
Since we can remember, we have always looked both ways before crossing the street — this is the only municipal policy to stop people from being hit by cars. This policy is offered to accuse non-automobiles of not paying attention to their safety.
Do cars matter more in Toronto than people? Arturo Castaneyra /Unsplash
We all know that automobiles are to blame, but just like “guns do not kill people. People kill people,” cars also don’t. Drivers kill people. Like the gun, it seems that the vehicle is infallible.
Toronto’s pedestrians and cyclists have a simple solution to saving lives: ban automobiles in the areas where we live. This is not possible today because cars are more important than pedestrians.
Death and injury are, therefore, inevitable externalities to the car’s modern benefit. The City of Toronto would not adopt a policy to save the innocent and darling children who fell in the hundreds over a century. It will also do nothing to protect adult pedestrians and bicyclists, whom many consider urban pests.
