Raise the Hammer

A man is dead. Please, some more maturity. There are ways of proven effectiveness to prevent this sort of thing from ever occurring again. These range from the Dutch “Sustainable Safety” to the Swedish “Vision Zero” to adopting for street safety the industrial safety methods of Ontario’s Ministry of Labour.

Although, quite frankly, if one takes a close look at all three, they share some common characteristics. The most important characteristic is recognizing that human beings are inherently fallible and are susceptible to such failings as being distracted, careless, fatigued, sick, under the influence of emotions such as anger or depression or under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

It is therefore necessary to mistake-proof the infrastructure to ensure that even when human beings are being human their capability of harming others has been removed. There are two fundamental ways of doing this, which are prevention and mitigation.

Prevention means preventing dangerous incidents so that they do not happen in the first place. For street safety, this includes mode shift policies to replace car driving with walking, cycling and public transit. Other prevention methods include separating human beings in time or space from car drivers by unravelling of modes, and by creating and steadily expanding car-free zones.

Mitigation includes things like stout steel and concrete barriers so that when car drivers crash, they do not kill or injure other people.

Right now, the 10 year average of people being crushed and killed by motorists in Hamilton is 19.2 people every year. And of being poisoned and killed by motorists is 94 people per year in Hamilton. For a total body count of over 113 people killed by motorists every year in Hamilton.

I have zero tolerance of this threat to myself and my family. This threat can be ended. It is just a matter of doing so.

Comment edited by KevinLove on 2014-09-11 01:37:03