Raise the Hammer

Bastards.

Hamilton: best place to raise the speed limit

Funny (not really) how whenever they get a report whose data they don't like they just question it and dismiss it. Stats schmats.

Oddly, most of the data for the report comes from the city through its various reporting requirements.
So they throw the report under the bus, when really they should have said that they misreported the data to the public and other governments?

“The vulnerability of the human body should be a limiting design parameter for the traffic system…”

This is a key principle of both the Dutch “Sustainable Safety” traffic design infrastructure planning and Ontario Ministry of Labour’s industrial accident prevention system.

But, of course, we are in Hamilton. As soon as someone steps out of a factory, their life is no longer worth protecting. Too bad.

Anyone know how much it might cost to hire a lawyer to sue the city and certain counselors specifically?

sad that it's come to this, but I suspect many would be willing to join a suit. It's the only hope of seeing safety improvements to Hamilton's road network.
Curious to see how the process could get started.

Public Authorities Protection Act. Look it up. But for this Wynne and McGuinty would be broke.

I would join, but I imagine it would be more important for family members of victims to do so.

Dec 14/15 This just happened: I was walking east bound on York Blvd approaching Queen St. A black F150 pickup is on the sidewalk median facing north. Northbound lights turn green, F150 races through the crosswalk and mounts the sidewalk where I am standing. I jumped back narrowly avoiding being hit. F150 continues North on Queen with 2 tires on the sidewalk for half a block to pass another car.

In the same light sequence: Eastbound lights turn green. White SUV in the right turn lane decides to gun it and continue e/b on York and uses the bike lane to pass a DARTS bus on the right side.

As I'm approaching Bay St a Black SUV heading westbound proceeds to use the eastbound turning lane, pulls a U-turn around the median, mounts the opposite sidewalk, nearly hitting me and then runs the red light at Bay.

All of this happened in about 7 minutes. Madness.

Before I came to Hamilton, I'd never seen a vehicle on a sidewalk in Ontario unless there for an emergency or temporarily for unloading. Now, I can say I've witnessed drivers using sidewalks to pass turning vehicles; to make three point turns; to park; to avoid slowing down on a turn. Somehow, when I was learning to drive I picked up the lesson that the sidewalk is never for a vehicle. Not so here.

Hamiltonians are on average some of the worst drivers I've observed. I've had walking commutes in a number of different cities, and the behaviour that is common place here would be considered noteworthy and appalling elsewhere. When I talk to people in this city, they don't seem generally to be any stupider than anywhere else, so I don't understand why they are such absent-minded, discourteous and poor drivers.

look no further than the response from two veteran city councillors upon learning that speeding is a massive problem on Linc and Red Hill.

Some guy once attended an open house at Westcliffe Mall and complained that his trip on the Linc took 4 extra minutes than longer....therefore, any data showing excessive speeding must be a grand conspiracy to get everybody out of their cars (favourite line of the CHML crowd) and to grind our economy to a halt (as if city hall has needed any help doing this the past 50 years).

Wow... that's nuts. I was literally run off Dundurn today on my bike. Totally empty lane beside me but the driver laid on his horn and loudly sped up at me from behind. I veered onto the sidewalk just missing getting blasted.

But don't worry folks. Lloyd Ferguson went for a Sunday afternoon drive and was only able to do 20 over the speed limit. We need more lanes in this city if we hope to hit 50 over the limit with ease.

Thank you for this, I have been wondering what the hell is happening in Hamilton.

don't expect you to write an online article just because I would like one, but I can't help but wonder if some public shaming of this pathetic group at city hall from non-Hamilton sources might help the cause? They simply don't care what citizens say. The old boys have run this town for their own gain for decades regardless of the damage it inflicts on our economy, quality of life or actual life itself.

Is there an actual process where citizens can take their municipality to court? A quick google search seems to show that it is possible

yes it's called the legal process.

Problem is the city is insured and has gigantic tax pockets. So you'd effectively be paying them to defend their lawsuit from you.

This is a moral problem not a legal one. An individual or their family will get some compensation legally but there won't be change until the city prioritizes these citizens.

Imagine if a cop were killed walking across a crosswalk. It would be pandemonium. Heck a police dog would spur 100x more action than a steady stream of vulnerable citizens getting killed.

for example Glenn De Caire's motion yesterday to name eight bridges after police officers who died in service. The last being in 1968. I'm not trivializing that. But a teacher got killed on his way home from work a couple days ago and how is that any less of a tragedy, and De Caire's motion passes unanimously at the police services board and I bet will fly through council, who are busy voting on a moratorium on safe streets. We are officially at rock bottom in this city.

My partner is applying for a new job in Toronto. If she gets it, we're out of here. I have had it with the pack of idiots that runs this city.

A friend of mine was looking at moving here from TO many years ago. Specifically at a house between King and Main. His logic was "surely the city will make these streets safe and business-friendly soon, and we'll be right there walking distance to all the action."

I told him to only buy if he liked how those streets function, because the odds of them changing anytime soon were slim to none. This was about 10 years ago.

They stayed in TO, and owe me big time for my honesty! :)

...and I'm out. She got the job.

Hi Aidan, You’ve been a great advocate for safe streets so this isn't directed to you but I’m furious. On November 29 a man was killed walking on the sidewalk at Main and Hess. I can’t find out his name. On December 2, Jay Keddy was killed biking up the Claremont Access. On December 11, Mara Balach was killed walking across a crosswalk on Queenston Rd. This is an epidemic. Yet these stories barely make the news – do you even know the name of the first individual? How many officers are investigating Mr. Keddy’s accident?

Maybe part if the reason for the silence is the mistaken notion that there are pure accidents, some sort of random inevitable occurrence, or singular events caused by bad or drunk drivers. In fact, what they are is a product of our community which does not care about pedestrians and cyclists. These are marginalized people, elderly and children, often.

Also, we seem to empathize with the drivers, not the victims. We’ve all been behind the wheel and almost been part of a horrible accident. We understand that it’s not a problem of bad drivers, because it is insane to be allowed to race through residential areas, which people regularly do in front of my house on Herkimer. Yet when people call for change, the naysayers claim ‘we need to know the facts’ of the accident before rushing to judgment. It was probably dark clothing, or the victim was at fault, or maybe even it was the driver, in which case was he drunk? We don’t ask our traffic department to study the intersection. In fact, when a neighbourhood group managed to implement speed calming on a tiny neighbourhood, council passed a 5-year moratorium on any other street calming efforts.

I walk to work every day. I know that more often than not, a car turning from a one-way street to another one way street will not look both ways to see if a pedestrian is walking counter to traffic. If I’m walking north on Queen across Herkimer, the majority of cars turning right from Herkimer across that deadly intersection (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/police-looking-for-witnesses-in-hamilton-hit-and-run-1.2569425 - no name I could find of victim or driver) will not look southward to see if pedestrians are crossing. I can literally knock on the windows of the average driver before they turn to look at me. Most of them wave sheepishly, sorry, my bad. I get it. We designed that intersection that way, and we are conditioned as drivers that endangering pedestrian lives is not really that big of a deal.

I’d like to see some anger on this issue. I’d like to see some opposition to Terry Whitehead that isn’t ‘oh gee Terry that’s a goofy motion’. This is past ignorance, past recklessness, and past negligence. I’ll be blunt: opposition to safe streets because of the effects on traffic flow very likely contributed to the deaths of Jay Keddy and Mara Balach. The only reason it's not criminal negligence is that the reasonable man on the Hamilton omnibus is driving his Escape at 60 kph up Bay Street past Central School.

I'd like a task force or inquiry, not run out of the traffic department or police, to study these deaths and determine how much each was contributed to by: weather, road conditions, driver, victim, etc etc. One of the factors would be 'social conditioning' and another would be 'street design'. Let's recognize and remember these victims by accepting our own culpability as a city and community.

Yours sincerely, AK

absolutely fantastic comment.

Again, I echo my earlier suggestions for very quick and rather easy low hanging fruit: no right on red city-wide, and on all main streets, walkable retail districts, transit stops, school crossings and rec centre/library zones install the sidewalk facing street lights that have recently been installed on the new portion of West 5th near Mohawk College and Main St in front of city hall.

I saw two Sir John A MacDonald students almost get hit today by a red-light runner making a left from York onto Bay. The light had been red for at least 6-7 seconds. Driver didn't even attempt to stop, or look left. Just looked right to make sure no cars were coming along Bay northbound. Thankfully the students must be used to walking in this city and were very attentive and stayed on the sidewalk seeing this lunatic coming.
Had they been hit, the media and councillors would be asking 'were they wearing iPods?' or 'students need to pay more attention and not be goofing around all the time'. etc.....

One of the interesting things is that the two pedestrian cases cited here were low and very low speed impact cases. One was on private property exiting a parking lot onto public property and technically not a road design issue. The other was a lady turning left, presumably from a stopped position, also arguably not a road design issue. I do not see these two cases as indicative of a wider problem other than the fact that cars were involved. Time of day, colour of clothing and driver attentiveness are probably way bigger factors than road design.

Most of the comments about poor road design etc. throughout this site are valid. But these are not the cases to make those points. The poor fellow on the Claremont is a victim of poor design/decision making as that roadway is in no way properly designed for biking. Whether or not it should be is a different question.

Comment edited by CharlesBall on 2015-12-15 10:38:40

Right on!

The problem is that the persons determining speed (and road design, although this was NEVER mentioned in reports) not to be a factor, the HPS, have shown a consistent pattern of shifting blame for accidents from drivers onto pedestrians.

If I understand the circumstances, the driver was exiting northbound from the lot and hit a pedestrian who was coming from the east. The road design is absolutely a factor because the traffic only comes from the west, so the driver does not think to look east. Yes this driver made an error however the driver would likely have looked both ways if York was a normal 2 way street instead of a divided road

I see people make this same lazy move all the time, even on two-way streets. If someone is turning left into a 2-way street, then yes, they look both ways. But if they are pulling out and going right, it seems 90% of drivers have forgotten one of the first things you learn in driving class: look both ways at all times before ever proceeding.

See you sorta get it. Driver error was "probably a big factor".

That's the point. Humans make mistakes. People shouldn't die as a matter of course just because someone made a mistake.

That exact spot? Maybe you're right.

But the overall mentality and mindset created by the one way network encourages fast aggressive driving where drivers develop the habit of only looking one way for oncoming traffic.

Ok Terry

Seriously. What's next. Suggest walking helmets with reflective strips and flashing lights front and rear.

Stop being an apologist for our broken streets. The city needs a major reset on the way it designs its streets.

The person struck on York by the car exiting the parking lot had a lot to do with street design. Our lower city one way street network results in many drivers only looking for oncoming automobile traffic when waiting to turn.

Pedestrians are merely an afterthought..............or a potential statistic if walking in the direction opposite traffic flow.

so is the 401

And how would one exiting the parking lot in question turn left?

And because it's a boulevard, you only need to look one way when exiting a parking lot.

Um, no you don't, or you run over the poor b*d walking from the other direction.

Of course. I was responding to CharlesBall's claim that because York is two-way, the driver would have been looking both ways before pulling out, which of course isn't true.

So that absolves the driver from being dufus? Paris has Boulevards. Holland is full of Boulevards. This was a very low speed collision caused by the driver.

Caused by a driver who is not used to having to look out for pedestrians because we have designed streets that are fundamentally hostile to them. Really, this is simple stuff.

The terrible design trains Hamilton drivers to be inattentive and aggressive.

Try crossing a street here and then try doing it in another city...

"...colour of clothing." Can you explain this? Why do you think this is a factor and what implications should we draw when you say it's a (significant) factor?

It is called "blaming the victim." When it comes to clothing choices, rape victims used to be blamed for "dressing slutty." Same thing.

Right. What it means is if I'm walking out to a restaurant and get hit by a car, I had it coming to me because I was wearing a dark jacket instead of the high-visibility vest required by such a dangerous situation. Sure, makes sense. That 81-year-old was just asking to be killed by a motorist, walking in a crosswalk like that with the wrong colour whatever.

Well said AK!
I would just add one comment. Our experience has been that, yes, our leaders do ask the traffic engineers to look at the intersections; following accidents or law suits. The problem, is that this occurs after a child is injured for life or a senior is killed and then years later, a traffic light is installed. To which our leaders pat themselves on the back that they've addressed Public Safety. No one is listening or seeing that some, if not all, of these tragedies are preventable. Zero Vision.

"Hamilton is already an outlier among Ontario cities with a pedestrian injury rate 42 percent higher than the provincial average and a cycling injury rate 81 percent higher"

I'm thinking those stats have already soared much higher. Your city council is a disgrace.

To fix this problem, what do we do and how do we do it?

This was always waiting to happen - our roads are designed with a thin margin of error, and then we add on the Christmas/December stress, early dark and early sunset putting glare in everyone's eyes? That makes it far more dangerous. But usually, everybody's hiding away this time of year.

With our Octember weather, that's changed. We're walking around, we're out on our bikes.

Put all those factors together and that put Hamilton's dangerous streets over the limit and now they can't even pretend to be safe.

also the factor of more and more people choosing transit, cycling and walking as transportation modes. Even if it had gotten colder like it normal does, these numbers are only going to increase year over year. We've got to fix our streets ASAP.

One thing I observe is that any part of Hamilton just trains drivers to be pretty quick with their cars and it's easy to be lazy, going with the flow of very fast cars ahead and behind you that are all prodding you to be a little more aggressive. That escalates the peer pressure. If we tame any small fraction of Hamilton, aggressive drivers will just blow through them -- a lot of Hamilton needs to be changed.

I heard from my spouse that neighbours said a car barrelled down Proctor Bvld (a very rare tamed street in Hamilton; a very old "Complete Street" experiment from many decades ago) -- at 100kph and lost control in the very narrow spaces between the median and parked cars, and destroyed a bunch of parked cars.

Most cars will slow down while driving through thee rare tight Hamilton street such as Proctor Blvd, but from a Hamilton metro wide basis, drivers have fallen into easy habits of going fast and cornering fast; that they will present a structural problem in taming Hamilton's street to an extent.

It will take widespread changes, acceleration of safety improvements (e.g. sharper turning radiuses, bumpouts, zebra crosswalks, better signalling, full green paint through intersections for bike lanes, etc) combined with enforcement, covering a significant minority part of Hamilton (Even just the entire downtown and nearby surroundings) to get stubborn drivers to not to attempt the same habits on tamed streets.

Nothing will change till the price of oil makes it prohibitive to drive. That in turn force people to give up the car and rely on self-powered or public transit.

Ryan, when's the next Peak Oil article coming? Gas is 88 cents a litre at Costco right now.

when they ban cyclists and pedestrians from high speed high density arterials

That's some vision for your city!

Hamilton, the best place to get the hell out of the way!

Pedestrians, bikes and streetcars were here first. I'm on board with your plan.

The urban renewal the city undertook in the 60's/70's envisioned the downtown to be developed with Plaza Levels connected by pedestrian bridges to remove people from the streets.

We know how that vision played out. Jackson Square's plaza connected to the Art Gallery's plaza by a single pedestrian bridge. Done.

Unfortunately the mind set of too many remains mired in that time. The solution is not separation of people from the streets, but rather a true sharing of the space through the implementation of complete streets. The only thing standing in the way is a generation of entitled car drivers who see no reason to share at all. Can't really blame them. We've spent 60 years managing their expectations by catering to their every whim.

What city are you thinking of that does such a good job of separating pedestrians from streets?

I believe successful cities do in fact integrate all users. They're called complete streets.