The Backdrop
Situation
Road accidents in the City of Toronto are a big issue for our city. If you take the road daily, chances are, you see or hear about an accident every other day and chances are you’ve been involved in one. In fact, from 2006-2020, 2,297 people lost their lives due to fatal road-related accidents, and over 14,000 nonfatal injuries.
Take Miguel Joshua Escanan, an 18-year-old man was riding his bicycle northbound in the curb lane of Avenue Road, north of Bloor Street West, and was struck by a cement truck that was also traveling northbound on Avenue Road. By all accounts, the collision was preventable given there is no bike lane along this stretch of Avenue Road, and said construction at the Park Hyatt Hotel has made the area even more dangerous.
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/toronto-on/miguel-escanan-10316585
Toronto politicians have been piously declaring that “no loss of life is acceptable” on our streets. Many would have us think that by saying this, and that by setting zero or interim “moving towards zero” targets, they are “committing” to “Vision Zero.” But in most cases, they are not doing anything worthy of the name. True Vision Zero systems prioritize the safe passage of our most vulnerable populations, whether they are walking or using any number of light mobility devices from bicycles to wheelchairs.
We must find ways to take better initiatives to avert these accidents as much as we can. We know Road Accidents are not a natural phenomenon, they’re indeed influenced by various factors, so studying past data might help us get a better understanding of how these factors and the occurrence of accidents are related.
Data Acquisition
This dataset includes all traffic collision events where a person was either Killed or Seriously Injured (KSI) from 2006 - 2020. The dataset has several insightful variables including but not limited to the day and time of the accident, the coordinates of the accident, the road surface condition, and if the accident was fatal or non-fatal. The source of the data comes from police reports where an officer attended an event related to a traffic collision.
Data Location and Associated Meta Data Supplementary Document - https://data.torontopolice.on.ca/pages/ksi
CITY OF TORONTO ROAD SAFETY PLAN SEPT 2019 - This report and subsequent pages is from the City’s Road Safety Plan, from the NACTO Designing Cities Conference: A Global Perspective: Streets that Save Lives.
Personas
After careful consideration, I designed this analysis with two people in mind, our local city Councillor Brad Bradford and Fiona a newbie cyclist.
Brad Bradford, my City Councillor for Ward 19, Beaches-East York was elected in 2018 as one of the youngest members of the Council. Brad is bringing fresh ideas and positive politics to City Hall. He ran a grass-roots, non-partisan campaign, with a strong mandate from residents, including a hard and focused look at increasing the city’s bike network and elevating the Vision Zero Plan.
Fiona is a newbie cyclist and urban professional who loves fitness and the city outdoors. Although she knows how to cycle, she finds the city streets far too dangerous and takes the TTC wherever she goes.
I selected these two in mind as my focus because if through this analysis I can demonstrate to our local Councillor that more effort is needed, and through empathizing with Fiona situation as I looked at different avenues with this data to reinforce my position that more needed to be done to keep our streets safe from vehicle collisions.
Storyboard Ideation Data Story Flow
My first prototype was heavily dependent upon data to drive home the size, volume, and magnitude of the problem residents who use the city streets face day in and day out.
My second prototype I went back to my personas, and thought about the
missing human connection, and impact these collisions have on real
people. I also wanted to locate and find relevant research on what the
city can do about it with a relook at the Vision Zero Program. 
Vision Zero Plan
Acknowledging the rise in traffic-related fatalities, the City of Toronto developed Toronto’s Vision Zero Road Safety Plan: a five-year (2017-2021) action plan focused on improving safety and eliminating traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries. Launched in July 2016, with an initial proposed budget of $80.0 million, the program is aimed at one aim, in short, “Eliminate all fatalities and serious injuries on city streets to create a safe and healthy city” (City of Toronto, 2016, p. 10)“. The Plan prioritizes the safety of our most vulnerable road users across emphasis areas through a range of extensive, proactive, targeted, and data-driven initiatives.The plan uses data to identify areas where improvements are needed most, and sets a clear goal to reduce fatal and serious injury collisions by 20% by 2026”
The Vision Zero Road Safety Plan is a bold pledge to improve safety across our city using a data-driven and targeted approach, focusing on the locations where improvements are most needed. The Plan addresses safety for the most vulnerable users of our transportation system-pedestrians, school children, older adults, and cyclists. Based on factors that contribute to serious injury and fatality crashes, the plan will also focus on aggressive and distracted driving and safety for motorcyclists.
The City is committed to Vision Zero and accepts its fundamental message: fatalities and serious injuries on our roads are preventable, and we must strive to reduce traffic-related deaths and injuries to ZERO.
Pedestrians
Between 2005 and 2020, there were 2,175 pedestrians killed or seriously injured in a collision with a motor vehicle. Corridors within the city exhibiting deadly or serious injury collisions will be prioritized and targeted for pedestrian safety improvements such as speed reductions, shortened crossing distances, no-right-turns on red, advance greens for pedestrians, fully protected left-turns and police enforcement for compliance with traffic rules that affect pedestrian safety. These measures will improve pedestrian safety by reducing crossing distances, making the pedestrian crossing more accessible and reducing vehicle conflicts with pedestrians.
School Children
Between 2005 and 2020 there were 3 school children killed and 70 seriously injured in a collision with a motor vehicle. Schools will be identified within a 1 km radius of a killed or serious injury collision involving a school child and will be prioritized for an in-depth review to see if there are opportunities for safety improvements such as enhanced pavement markings and signage, “Watch Your Speed” driver-feedback signs, police enforcement targeting safety concerns for school children or other enhanced safety improvements both within the school zone and along pre-designated active and safe routes to school.
Seniors
Between 2005 and 2020, there were over 870 seniors killed or seriously injured in a collision with a motor vehicle.Special consideration will be given at locations exhibiting killed or serious injury collisions where there are higher concentrations of senior pedestrians living and interacting. These areas will be prioritized and targeted for speed reductions, increased walk times at traffic signals, enhanced pavement markings, “Watch Your Speed” driver-feedback signs and police enforcement for aggressive driving behaviours that affect senior pedestrians.
Cyclists
Between 2005 and 2020, there were over 540 cyclists killed or seriously injured in a collision with a motor vehicle. In depth reviews will be conducted at locations exhibiting high killed or serious injury collisions involving cyclists along existing cycle tracks to see if there are any opportunities to enhance the existing cycling facilitates to improve safety. Such initiatives include the implementation of cyclist signals, bike boxes, advance green for cyclists and police enforcement targeting behaviours that impact cyclist safety such as dooring and improper use of bicycle lanes.
The Analysis
Toronto Compared to other Cities
Out of 24 Cities, Toronto ranks 18 out of 24 based on Traffic fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants.
CITY OF TORONTO ROAD SAFETY PLAN SEPT
2019
Geographic Distribution of Traffic Collisions
As a first step, I looked at the extent level of the data we’re working with, especially when we’re working with geospatial data Traffic Collisions - Killed or Seriously Injured. So first, I’ve plotted all the accident locations on a map. For this, we’ve used Leaflet by ESRI which provides an option to make clusters from latitude and longitude data.
Since there are over 16,000 observations, it is more suitable to use cluster markers than to have each point marked when zoomed out. When you zoom in on each cluster, then the individual blue markers will appear. The ACCCLASS is the popup value for each marker, which indicates if the traffic accident was fatal or non-fatal.
The Cluster Map below shows accident hotspots with the number of accidents that occurred from 2006-2020. You can hover on these clusters to see the extent of the regions and further zoom down to see the exact locations
OBSERVATIONS & FINDINGS
- By zooming in on clusters on the map, one can see if accidents are fatal or non-fatal. You can see certain areas have a high volume of accidents, and if those accidents were serious or not.
FOCUS ON ARTERIAL HIGHSPEED STREETS/ROADS FOR INTERVENTION
- Surprisingly In the map, we can see that the number of accidents are
lowering down as we move away from CBD which maybe counter intuitive
given the population density within the inner core.
- However, when thinking about the distribution network of the city, and traffic areas with large masses going in and out of the city daily this becomes more understandable, linking to the city intervention method earlier of corridors within the city exhibiting deadly or serious injury collisions will be prioritized and targeted for pedestrian safety improvements such as speed reductions.
Collisions by Year
In order to understand if the Vision Zero Program was having an impact on the number of traffic collisions resulting in Killed or Seriously Injured (KSI) we need to look at the distribution of collisions from 2006 - 2020.
OBSERVATIONS & FINDINGS
- Although years since 2013 have marked drop in collisions, and well below the historical average, the Vision Zero program did come into full swing until July 2016.
Collisions by Year Revised
In order to understand if the Vision Zero Program was having an impact on the number of traffic collisions resulting in Killed or Seriously Injured (KSI) we need to look at the distribution of collisions from 2006 - 2020, and revise our average line to only incorporate those years from 2016 go forward.
OBSERVATIONS & FINDINGS
- Even with the Zero Vision Program in place, we still see Toronto’s approach to Vision Zero isn’t making streets safer.
- Excluding 2020 with Covid Restrictions in place and mobility mandates, it is probable that future years will not surpass 2018’s 10-year high of cyclist and pedestrian deaths, it is clear that this year will not represent a major departure from stubbornly high rates of deaths and serious injuries on Toronto’s roads.
Collisions by District
Collisions by Road Type
In order to understand which types of roads should be an area of focus I then looked at number of collisions by Road Type. Naturally, with the program focus on intervention methods we should see a reduction in collisions in Major Arterial Roads. In order to see this, we need to first look at the size and magnitude of the problem along Toronto’s Major Arterial streets/roads.
OBSERVATIONS & FINDINGS
- Even with the Zero Vision Program in place, we still see Toronto’s approach to Vision Zero isn’t making streets safer.
- Excluding 2020 with Covid Restrictions in place and mobility mandates, it is probable that future years will not surpass 2018’s 10-year high of cyclist and pedestrian deaths, it is clear that this year will not represent a major departure from stubbornly high rates of deaths and serious injuries on Toronto’s roads.
Collisions & Time
Do collisions happen at certain periods of time, would this help identify possible intervention methods that could be implemented based on time of the day?
OBSERVATIONS & FINDINGS
- We still observe collisions steadily increase as the day moves forward spiking throughout the afternoon through early to mid evening
Where on the Street?
By focusing on where do collisions take place in Toronto streets, we can better understand not only prevent collisions from happening in the first place, but also will minimize the consequences of the collisions that do take place.
CITY OF TORONTO ROAD SAFETY PLAN SEPT
2019
Speed Kills
No matter how safe vehicles, roads and drivers are, all of these things will fail beyond certain speeds. Each road must be designed to have speeds that are in line with the injury potentials on each type of road in the event of a crash. The level of harm to vulnerable road users rises dramatically at speeds of higher than 30 km/h, making this the sensible default limit for places where vehicles and people mix.
various research
Conclusion
Despite adopting a Vision Zero road safety plan in 2016 and passing an expanded Vision Zero 2.0 plan in June this year, Toronto’s road safety initiatives have so far been incapable of creating safer, let alone safe streets for vulnerable road users. Toronto is far from alone in this regard. Since New York City became the first North American city to adopt a Vision Zero road safety plan in 2014, more than 30 American cities have formally adopted Vision Zero plans. And yet, cyclist and pedestrian deaths are increasing or remaining stable across most Canadian and American Vision Zero cities.
Toronto’s Vision Zero 2.0’s heavy emphasis on lowering speed limits across much of the city. Reducing speed limits is not an unwelcome step, but simply changing signs does little to reduce driving speeds without design measures that force drivers to travel at a safe speed.
This approach to Vision Zero does little to encourage or facilitate cycling or walking, instead treating them as activities to be managed for safety. This allows for actions that make walking and cycling more difficult in the name of promoting safety and ignores the fact that active transportation becomes safer as more people do it.
The broad principles of Vision Zero are unquestionably laudable: advocating for designing roads to account for the errors of their users and adopting a holistic approach to road safety involving all relevant stakeholders. Sweden who have adopted Vision Zero, but in a significantly different way, the central government initiative intended to bring about systemic change to road design by shifting the culture of traffic engineering and planning to a framework that prioritizes the safety of all road users above all else (http://www.welivevisionzero.com/vision-zero/).
Vision Zero proposes that the people who design and build roads bear responsibility for the serious injuries and collisions that occur on them, although it still entails some measure of enforcement and education. The program’s mantra, “In every situation a person might fail…..The Road System Should Not”. Their Vision Zero approach has proven highly successful. It is based on the simple fact that we are human and make mistakes. The road system needs to keep us moving. But it must also be designed to protect us at every turn.
Toronto’s Vision Zero plans will likely continue to deliver lackluster results in Toronto until our city council takes the necessary shift toward prioritizing safety through design measures and rethinking the way we design and build our streets. Vision Zero faces an uphill battle in our city with its woefully inadequate public transit and streets designed to favour cars.
Adam Norman, 2021 Weston Web Vision
Zero
Without this reshift, we should expect to see more horror stories like Miguel Joshua Escanan proliferate across the city, and more “ghost bike”, memorials to mark the spot a cyclist was killed with white painted bike frames. A horrific reminder as lighthouses depicting dangerous waters around the streets and mounting tally and statistics to these unnecessary injuries and deaths impacting families, friends, and the livability of this city.
Christopher Hayes, June 2022