Not in Plain Sight: Dangerous Engineering Flaws in Winnipeg’s Design of Pedestrian Corridors
Part 3 — The Politics of Road Safety (Élyse Elle, ed.)
Executive Summary; Part 1; Part 2.
Traffic engineers are only one party involved in the issues. Institutions such as police, Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) and CAA, as well as many political leaders such as the mayor and some councillors, are on media and at public forums professing their road safety priorities, but the assertions do not align with the actions.
Claimed commitments to safety are contradicted when considering the pattern of apathy and avoidance towards correcting engineering. The same road safety presentation that I first did in 2012, and have been giving ever since at both universities has been repeatedly offered to WPS, MPI, and CAA. Information has been provided with meeting requests that are either declined or ignored, showing an unwillingness to discuss the problems. As one example, following the death of the four-year-old at the Isabel Street corridor, mayor Brian Bowman stated that “he’s committed to discussing ways to improve safety for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers in the city.” Despite this claim, he has to date refused all requests to meet and discuss the aforementioned and other engineering issues. In contrast, during the mayoral election campaign, other candidates did engage the concerns, watched the offered presentation, and subsequently made public announcements supporting the correcting of engineering.
These individuals and institutions cannot claim to be advocates for road safety when they have demonstrated an unwillingness to learn about, discuss, or advance solutions to real safety issues.
Ironically, attempts to dismiss and undermine progress often come from those who claim to most care about road safety. When the issue of missing school zone signs was in the Winnipeg Metro (which only mirrored earlier coverage by multiple news agencies dating back to 2012), Councillor Janice Lukes, who has been avidly professing her commitments to road safety, undermined the awareness by stating that she does not believe it. This was despite having seen the presentation showing the issues (which occurred following media pressure), seeing the list of missing signs, and the reporter having uploaded it with the article. The ignoring of facts cannot get more brazen with the result being that the signs are still missing to this day. When responding to a Free Press reporter respecting the content of the presentation, Councillor Lukes would only say that, “I found it interesting” and that they (road safety discussions) are “great stories.” When asked to discuss further respecting taking action, she refused to comment, claiming she is not an engineer. The reporter described the response as a “city roadblock.”
The contradictions further emerge when, rather than just finding it ‘interesting’, ‘a great story’, and reminding us that she’s not a traffic engineer, Councillor Lukes has argued for lower speed limits. Lowering speed limits is as much or more of an engineering issue than the common sense assertion that speed limit signs should be in compliance with established standards and best practices. Somebody who believes that speed limits should be lowered for safety should especially be an advocate for correcting signage.
These individuals and institutions cannot claim to be advocates for road safety when they have demonstrated an unwillingness to learn about, discuss, or advance solutions to real safety issues. A remaining consideration is the possible motive for the wilful blindness which can be explained by the conflicts of interest involving the traffic ticket industry. The province, city, police, and MPI each make millions of dollars from traffic tickets and the subsequent increasing of insurance rates which undeniably incentivises certain actions. Other institutions such as CAA typically operate closely with police and government in general, and have gone so far as to call each other their safety partners.
…when crashes occur, those who have failed to respond to real safety concerns will universally blame the road user, with speeding commonly cited.
Controlling Perceptions
The public is paying the costs of crashes with individuals paying the ultimate price of injury or in some cases, death, and as such, it is an enigma that there is tolerance of such a patently dangerous situation. The explanation lies in the conditioning of perceptions and framing that allow institutions to evade their own responsibilities by building an understanding that fault lies with individuals. Under this mantra, when crashes occur, those who have failed to respond to real safety concerns will universally blame the road user, with speeding commonly cited. Meanwhile, there is either no, or a misdirected conversation about the role of engineering.
An example is that following the Isabel Street crash, CAA and WPS partnered to examine safety at corridors, but the news only reported that there were 359 observed violations and that “pedestrians and drivers all need to take better care when it comes to safety.” In addition to blaming drivers, pedestrians were blamed for “hitting the button, not skipping a beat, not looking and continuing to cross […] putting their lives in the hands of the car.” The article continued to quote CAA and WPS instilling blame for actions such as stopping partway into the crosswalk, or crossing the street while talking on a cell phone. Ironically, while complaining about pedestrians prematurely entering the road, nothing was noted about the auditory chirping encouraging this behaviour. Equally absent was any mention of the lack of eye-level beacons. Instead, there were complaints about drivers not stopping right away or stopping part way into the crosswalk. When complaining about drivers not yielding, it would have been most imperative to reference that the city’s own study found that eye-level beacons increased driver yield compliance. Also relevant, was that instead of expanding the measure, the city reversed the correction that had already been made. This was left out of the dialogue.
Media portrayals of engineering are the opposite, as whenever improvements are made, the conversation turns from criticism of road users to praising the engineers’ proactive efforts.
In another representative article, Inspector Spado of the WPS stated, “We all have a part to play in road safety, so whether we’re travelling by car, bike or walking, we should all strive to be respectful and practice proper road safety”, and then turned the conversation to distracted driving. This statement is part of the pattern of deflecting the discussion from engineering to solely complaining about the behaviour of individuals while ironically saying ‘all’ of us have a part to play.
Media portrayals of engineering are the opposite, as whenever improvements are made, the conversation turns from criticism of road users to praising the engineers’ proactive efforts. For instance, when the eye-level beacons were added on St. Anne’s Road following the death of an eight-year-old, it was portrayed in a positive light as the city making the corridor safer, with a side note about a call for reduced speed limits. Media framing also referred to the city’s review as if it were the first study being done in response to the death, while ignoring the existence of the earlier 2016 findings and Mr. Cantor’s identification of the exact same problem in 2013, which predated the first of the recent child fatalities by five years.
A proper approach would have been for media to ask the obvious questions such as:
- Why was the engineering deficient in the first place?
- Why have our institutions ignored all advocacy efforts since they began in 2012 including refusing to have meetings or discuss the problems?
- Why did the deficiency continue after one of the city’s own engineers brought it to light in 2013?
- Once ignoring the issue in 2013, why was it further ignored in 2016 after the city’s own pilot project/study revealed safety benefits?
- After realising the safety benefits with the first set of beacons, why did the city then remove them?
- Why was the set on St. Anne’s Road installed only after an eight-year-old child was killed?
- Once the benefits are realised following multiple deaths and studies, why was the safety improvement only made at the one location where a child died?
- Why are we still dealing with, discussing, and studying a problem that does not exist in other jurisdictions such as Toronto as opposed to just fixing it?
As of October 2019, there has been no criticism of the city’s failure to implement its own recommendations.
The pattern of not holding the city accountable continued eight months later when in April 2019, the city announced that it would do a safety study on Isabel Street where a four-year-old was killed. This was portrayed in media as the city’s “prelude to the introduction of traffic safety-enhancement measures.” While there was some discussion about the city having delayed its traffic studies, there was no criticism of the fact that the Isabel study was the fourth one ordered to examine the exact same problem (lack of eye-level beacons). There was also no mention that the third study that had been ordered in the fall of 2018 never did come back, so the results of it remain elusive. Also absent was any mention that the eye-level beacons had been added at the St. Anne's corridor in August 2018 — a full 7.5 months before the four-year-old was killed. Even at that late of a stage, there had been well over half a year during which the city could have universally corrected a known problem before the next child pedestrian fatality occurred.
Media reporting should have criticised the city’s continuous inaction and completing of studies destined to reach the same conclusion that is common sense and been an advocated issue since 2012. As was predictable, the report for Isabel came back in June 2019 recommending that eye-level beacons be installed at that corridor. As of October 2019, there has been no criticism of the city’s failure to implement its own recommendations.
Organizations such as CAA, WPS, MPI and many others have failed to even reference the possibility that engineering could be the commonality underlying our crashes.
Following the most recent crashes, those blaming road users have only doubled down their efforts. An article by CBC referenced that by October, 2019 had already been particularly deadly for pedestrians and that the number killed was already triple that from 2018, putting 2019 on track to be the deadliest in decades according to MPI. The article then referenced a video taken at a corridor on Osborne Street over the course of an hour which supposedly recorded fourteen dangerous behaviours. It was shown to three ‘experts’ — being a driving instructor, retired traffic cop turned ticket fighter, and an urban planner — all of which expressed disgust at the behaviour of road users.
The law is thus being misrepresented in a way that creates a false perception that what the drivers were doing was illegal, and then builds on the presumption that illegal is dangerous.
It is however under the subtitle, ‘The Law’, where the article deviated from pointing blame to misrepresentation. Under this heading, the retired traffic cop discussed cars that began to proceed through the crosswalk after the pedestrian had left their side of the road but had not yet reached the opposite curb. He then stated that, “If a pedestrian is crossing and there is a median in the road, the driver is clear to proceed once the pedestrian reaches the median. Otherwise, you’re supposed to wait until they’ve fully crossed the street.” What the law actually says is that the driver is required to yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian that is in the same or about to be in the same half of the roadway as the driver, which is the opposite of what was stated. This is reflected in more than one section of the Highway Traffic Act. The law is thus being misrepresented in a way that creates a false perception that what the drivers were doing was illegal, and then builds on the presumption that illegal is dangerous. A retired traffic cop turned ticket fighter should know the law, especially when he calls his firm ‘Traffic Ticket Experts’. It is ironic that this individual later references his dismay that there may not be enough education for road users to know the law.
It should not be surprising that the solution advocated by the person who’s company fights traffic tickets is that we need more enforcement (tickets to fight).
It is illogical to argue that a driver who proceeds through a crosswalk once the pedestrians are well out of the conflict path, (in many cases pedestrians may be multiple lanes away), is somehow driving dangerously. This is common practice and a necessary part of traffic operations. Consider the same behaviour in a slightly different context; Many of Winnipeg’s wide and congested intersections (commonly found in the downtown area) have prohibitions on turning during red, limiting drivers to turning during the green, which is also when pedestrians are active in the adjacent crosswalk. It is routine and legal for drivers turning on green or red to wait for a pedestrian break wide enough to safely make the turn, with the law only requiring the driver to yield. It would not only be overly restrictive to require such a driver to wait until there are no pedestrians in any part of the crosswalk, but also impossible to move traffic during busy times.
The article further talked about drivers who did not stop despite the approaching pedestrian being visible. While this is problematic, another consideration should have been that some of these instances may be examples of the earlier discussed false sense of security. Without eye-level beacons, the driver may not have seen the overhead beacons and with the reliance on the existence of the corridor, may not have been watching as avidly for pedestrians. The conclusion by the driving instructor and the retired traffic officer was that more enforcement is needed. It should not be surprising that the solution advocated by the person who’s company fights traffic tickets is that we need more enforcement (tickets to fight). The urban planner quickly passed over any discussion of engineering, ending with the concluding cliché statement that, “the solution may simply be for everyone to slow down.” This ignores the obvious flaws and also the fact that the crashes have often involved lower speeds.
Overall, the net result is a conditioning of public sentiment to continually blame drivers, and accept the highly profitable enforcement industry while entirely overlooking the responsibilities and failures of those who are supposed to protect us.
The most recent article is only representative of the pattern. There is still the same bashing of drivers combined with general lines about speeding and calls for enforcement. The only originality was the addition of a misrepresentation of the law and then a statement that others do not know the law. The obvious engineering flaws that were in plain sight of everybody involved remained elusive. Organizations such as CAA, WPS, MPI and many others have failed to even reference the possibility that engineering could be the commonality underlying our crashes. One article about the eight-year-old killed on St. Anne’s Road opened with the promising titled that, “We Failed”, but then only talked about speeding. Overall, the net result is a conditioning of public sentiment to blame road users, and accept the highly profitable enforcement industry while entirely overlooking the responsibilities and failures of those who are supposed to protect us. Whenever agencies make even a minor improvement, it is seen as being proactive rather than correcting something that should never have been a problem and in most cases, still exists to what may be a slightly lesser but still unacceptable degree.
Perceptual Feedback Loops
Those that support and often profit directly from traffic ticketing will constantly repeat their claims, and through the fallacy of appealing to authority, ingrain it in the public perception to the point that the sentiment becomes understood and self reinforcing through the fallacy of appealing to popular opinion. The result is a conditioning where the claims no longer have to be made and instead are regurgitated without prompting from those who have no ties to the ticket interests. This can expand to involve institutions such as Safety Services Manitoba, which has advocated that it is up to drivers and pedestrians to improve road safety without the slightest mention of roadway design as having any relevance.
…a paradox has developed where those that have the sincerest intentions of wanting safer roads will automatically assume speed is the cause of crashes, but only in the context of blaming the driver.
When the speed limit was being lowered in school zones, it was stated as being done to improve safety, with one resident pointing to a crash involving a ten-year-old pedestrian as evidence that the change was long overdue. What was not referenced was that this crash occurred at a stop sign and there was no evidence that speed was a factor. In articles about that crash, residents blamed speed immediately before police had cited any causes even though the need to replace the 206 missing school zone signs would have been the more relevant talking point. In another case, when a five-year-old was killed, also at a stop sign, the family immediately put out calls for drivers to slow down. Out of a desire to keeps kids safe, the family of the child killed in the corridor on St. Anne’s Road also said they wanted the speed limit lowered without mentioning any of the obvious engineering issues. When two girls were hit on Bishop Grandin, the media reported that parents found the intersection to be dangerous because people drive too fast, with one resident stating that, “It’s always just people racing around.” The driver was later found not to have been speeding, and the crash was shown to be the result of pedestrian error, demonstrating that it is in fact not always a matter of people “racing.”
The current milieu is such that whenever crashes happen, blaming drivers in general and speed in particular is the knee jerk reaction before any of the facts are known. This creates an association between crashes and speed serving as a confirmation bias subtly reinforcing the perceptions. In one example, a driver was arrested for entering the intersection before it was safe and hitting a pedestrian. While police did find the driver at fault, there was no evidence cited that speed had a role, yet CTV’s insert links under the heading ‘Related Stories’ provided a link to an article about “calls for speed reductions” affirming an association that had not been made.
…the presumptions and blame are disproportionately in favour of those who have the power to control the framing and portrayals.
The current sentiment has become so ingrained that it survives even glaring contradiction. For instance, a paradox has developed where those that have the sincerest intentions of wanting safer roads will automatically assume speed is the cause of crashes, but only in the context of blaming the driver. The city’s chief operating officer defended against the complaint that speed limit signage was inadequate by stating that, “speeding is not considered a major safety concern” (p. 2) and that, “[i]f speed were the reason motorists are involved in collisions, then there would be no roadways with high speed limits” (p. 8). These claims should have stoked outrage at the city’s lack of fulfilling its engineering responsibilities, especially from individuals who continually claim to care about road safety. To be consistent, these same parties and individuals should have been part of an outcry when CBC reported the city’s removal of speed limit signage.
In one case, a pedestrian that was hit and seriously injured in a corridor on Corydon acknowledged that the vehicle that hit her was travelling 40 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, but still blamed speed. Especially ironic is that Corydon was one of the roads specifically referenced in the engineering complaint (p. 11) that the city was defending against when stating that speed is not a major safety concern. In light of those revelations, if speed is the complaint, signage should have been the first thing attacked. A response more in line with the problem would have been to complain about the absence of eye-level beacons and advance warning signs.
The default reaction to crashes becomes calls to write more traffic tickets. This approach is extremely profitable but does nothing to address underlying causes.
Excessive speed and other actions of road users certainly are a factor in some crashes, but the presumptions and blame are disproportionately in favour of those who have the power to control the framing and portrayals. How issues are represented and understood will have a direct effect in constructing public perceptions, and will subsequently define which (often misguided) ‘solutions’ will be advocated and supported, in response to a very real problem.
Misplaced Efforts
Responses that are either not going to correct the causes, or will address a cause that only plays a relatively minor role, can at best produce a minor safety improvement. Instead of dealing with the obvious — such as missing school zone signs, improper speed limit signage, and eye-level beacons — in line with the culture of driver blaming, the solutions that are advocated and then subsequently implemented are enforcement, and more awareness for drivers. The default reaction to crashes becomes calls to write more traffic tickets. This approach is extremely profitable but does nothing to address underlying causes.
Speed certainly is a factor in some cases, but when the driver is not to blame, attacking drivers is not going to increase safety. For instance, the St. Anne’s fatality involving the eight-year-old resulted in no charges against the driver. Although police were silent on the issue, a witness to a crash that killed two pedestrians noted that, “I don’t think he was speeding.” Pedestrian fatalities often involve very low speeds such as crashes involving backing up in parking lots or turning vehicles hitting a pedestrian in an adjacent crosswalk. Despite these facts, one perceived solution commonly advocated is that photo enforcement cameras should be placed at corridors, and has been the solution suggested by a pedestrian that was hit in one.
One suggestion that failed to consider the problem was to convert the flashing yellow lights at the St. Anne’s corridor (where the eight-year-old was killed) to red, requiring drivers to stop rather than just yield. This was also advocated by a local architectural firm. Changing the flashing beacons from yellow to red would not correct the problem, as drivers not observing the yellow beacons are not going to be able to observe beacons of a different colour. When there is a failure of traffic yielding for pedestrians under the current rules, the solution is not to add increased restriction that only serves to strengthen the false sense of security.
While the normal response following a crash is to attack speed, consider that so many crashes in corridors have occurred during rush hour and in congested areas when and where speeds are typically low.
Most importantly, changing the colour would be contrary to traffic engineering policy, as there would be no way for a visually impaired (colour blind) driver to observe the colour of the beacons. Traffic signals account for this problem by standardizing where the lenses are in relation to their colour (red is always to the top or left if the display is mounted horizontally). A red flashing beacon at a corridor is also illegal under the Manitoba Highway Traffic Act regulations (pp. 16–17). Both the legality and impracticality of this solution demonstrates in part how efforts to address a problem can digress. Since it came from a city councillor, this suggestion had to be considered and dismissed by engineers using resources and further distracting the focus of the discussion.
The current pattern of adding more half signals to multi-lane high speed roads is also divorced from rationally considering the causes of the crashes. While the normal response following a crash is to attack speed, consider that so many crashes in corridors have occurred during rush hour and in congested areas when and where speeds are typically low. Also consider the lack of correlation between speed and fatalities/injuries as most of the corridor fatalities in recent years have occurred in 50 km/h zones. Any benefits of half signals will be misplaced when realizing that they are largely being used to replace corridors that have not been the types of locations that have had crashes. This is clear from the city having reviewed the corridors that have had deaths and determining that they did not meet to criteria for upgrading to half signals, and instead needed eye-level beacons.
More crosswalks would be the solution to a problem of jaywalkers being hit, not people being hit in the ones that already exist.
The architectural firm that supported converting corridors to having red beacons also had other ‘solutions’. It advocated converting all crosswalks to 30 km/h zones like school zones with photo enforcement cameras.
The plan ignores the false sense of security associated with low speed limits, and that speed has largely not been a factor in recent deaths. More importantly, the example corridor chosen is just north of Logan Ave, which is the location of the city’s highest producing intersection speed camera. The most glaring oversight is the assumption that drivers would comply with a 30 km/h limit despite thousands already being ticketed for exceeding the current 50 km/h limit.
Also ironic is that the drawings included dual 30 km/h signs on both sides of the road. Dual signage is the practice that Winnipeg justified not doing because “speeding is not considered a major safety concern.” Not only does Main Street at Logan have the worst documented speeding problem (by ticket stats), but it also does not have a single speed limit sign from Assiniboine Ave to and past the corridor and camera (a distance of over 1.5 km). At Assiniboine Ave, the speed limit drops from 60–50 km/h with no median sign.
This architectural firm seems to be well aware of the need for dual signage since they put it in their drawings, but yet failed to even reference that the current limit is not signed to those standards. Before advocating to lower the limit, the first step would be to argue that the current limit should be adequately signed.
Another suggestion by this firm was that there could be large pendulums placed above the road that would move in a wave similar to Newton’s Cradle. Here is how it was described in the CBC article:
Large balls hang above the crosswalk. The movement (swing) of the first ball is activated by the crosswalk button, along with lights and sound. The energy — like the pedestrian — crosses the street, releasing the last ball on the other side of the street into motion. The motion reverses until all pedestrians safely cross the street.
The proposed design was for the pendulums to swing until the last pedestrian has crossed, but it was not explained how the crosswalk would sense when this occurs. More importantly is that this design overlooks the current problem, being that corridors have nothing at eye-level that activates with the push-button. This design builds on the current problem of the beacons being exclusively above the road. Adding such artwork would likely further contribute to encouraging drivers to look up rather than in front of them where pedestrians are located.
Another solution disconnected from the problems also appeared in a CBC article. An urban planner suggested that the city should install more crosswalks so there is one every 130 meters along each road. While advocating engineering solutions is laudable, the suggestions need to consider the actual problem. It is nonsensical to argue that the solution to crashes in crosswalks is to install more when they are clearly not working. More crosswalks would be the solution to a problem of jaywalkers being hit, not people being hit in the ones that already exist.
The Underuse of Passive Engineering
In relation to enforcement, aggressive measures increase opportunity for ticketing when the increased restrictions are not obeyed. In contrast, passive measures will improve safety, but also decrease ticket opportunities…
Passive engineering can be described as improvements to a road’s design that make it more accommodating to users without requiring increased awareness or compliance. This would involve improving corridor design as well as many other measures such as fixing speed limit signage, putting flashing lights in school zones, and placing advance warning flashers before traffic signals, to name a few. In contrast, aggressive measures impose new restrictions that require compliance, decrease efficiency, and create a false sense of security (due to non-compliance or human error). Lowering speed limits, changing corridors to traffic signals, and yield signs to stop signs can all be described as aggressive measures. In relation to enforcement, aggressive measures increase opportunity for ticketing when the increased restrictions are not obeyed. In contrast, passive measures will improve safety, but also decrease ticket opportunities when driver awareness is increased such as by improved signage or flashing lights.
When passive engineering measures are implemented, they are illogically limited in scope. This is the case with the eye-level beacons being placed only on St. Anne’s Road. Factors that cause crashes can be divided into individual causes unique to an isolated case, versus universal causes that have to be addressed on a larger scale. When an engineering assessment is done at a location following a crash, factors unique to the location can be corrected on an individual basis. For instance, if there was a problem with trees blocking the signs, then the problem would be addressed by cutting the trees at that location, which was also done at the St. Anne’s corridor.
When millions of dollars could be made, it only took the death of one worker for the government to capitalize by doubling fines and ignoring their own responsibilities for adequate signage. In contrast, when only lives rather than revenue are on the line, there is a constant chain of apathy and inaction.
What is not a proper response is to identify a problem that is universal but only correct it at the isolated location. The lack of eye-level beacons is a deficiency inherent in the design of all corridors so it is not a correction that can be made on an isolated basis. In respect to randomly occurring events, the basis of the gambler’s (Monte Carlo) fallacy is the false belief that past events can be used to predict the future. This fallacy is exactly the type of reasoning being employed when limiting the correcting of a universal deficiency to the one location where a crash happened. Although a crash occurred at the corridor on St. Anne’s Road, when the problem is general to all corridors, the next crash is equally as likely to happen at any other location. The pattern continued with the engineering report from the crash on Isabel Street recommending eye-level beacons as if that location also has an isolated problem.
Although engineering is not being addressed universally (if at all), widespread change in traffic management does occur when revenue can be generated. In the case of construction zones, following the death of one worker, universally across the entire province, speeding fines were doubled without workers present. This legislation did nothing to address engineering despite the Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) report finding that the crash was related to engineering and the actions of the worker. As WSH stated, “[t]he signage in place […] did not appear sufficient to warn approaching traffic” and the signage “did not describe the conditions [that] approaching motorists would face.” It was also pointed out that the construction company had safety concerns but the highways department did not allow upgraded signage. This was not reported in media and instead, the only response was the raising of fines which has generated millions of dollars in revenue. In just a six week period in the summer of 2019, one construction zone on Brookside Blvd generated 6,951 tickets averaging about $500-$600 apiece. When millions of dollars could be made, it only took the death of one worker for the government to capitalize by doubling fines and ignoring their own responsibilities for adequate signage. In contrast, when only lives rather than revenue are on the line, there is a constant chain of apathy and inaction.
In the environment of underused passive measures, advocates continue to support aggressive responses. Jeanette Montufar was identified by CBC as a pedestrian safety expert who runs an engineering firm and was a professor of civil engineering at the University of Manitoba (she is also married to the city’s former head traffic engineer that was part of the initial correspondence over the issue of eye-level beacons in 2013). She applauded the city for deciding to add the beacons following the death of the child on St. Anne’s Road, but then advocated converting the corridor to traffic signals, which is a much more aggressive/restrictive measure. Meanwhile, nothing was said about the absurdity of correcting a universal deficiency only at the location where a fatality occurred. Further in line with the gambler’s fallacy, it is illogical to change a corridor to a half signal because a fatality occurred at that one location. As pointed out, when the problems are universal, the next fatality is equally as likely to occur at any other location. Ms. Montufar continued to reference the danger of pedestrians stepping off the curb too soon as justification for the advocated changes, but failed to acknowledge that the problem may just as easily be due to the lack of a delay in the auditory chirping, or that traffic signals actually require pedestrians to wait even longer.
In a separate news piece, Ms. Montufar further discussed that we need to consider how children use crosswalks, but again said nothing about the chirping that conditions pedestrians to immediately enter the roadway. She digressed further from the obvious solutions when stating that we should be examining how children behave instead of how to improve crosswalks that children use. It is a mystery how this could be the perspective of an expert that as the article states, is helping cities across the country implement pedestrian safety measures.
Also consider the CBC piece where the former traffic officer complained about drivers beginning to move before the pedestrian was completely across the road, and falsely referenced it as illegal. The problem at corridors has been related to both drivers not stopping and pedestrians prematurely entering the corridor, yet this ‘expert’ has the problem backwards. He is complaining about drivers supposedly prematurely starting, which has not been identified as a cause of the pedestrian deaths. A thought-out response needs to consider the factors that underlie the crashes.
In these instances, even though children have died, the conversation has turned from real solutions to advocating a certain profitable response — and this process is not unique to MPI.
Misplaced Priorities
It is only due to the culture of blaming road users and a safety deficiency that there can be support for more restrictions and penalization. In May 2019, MPI made many heartfelt statements about the pedestrian fatalities such as:
Statements such as these need to be considered in the context that MPI has generally refused to discuss or advocate for engineering solutions. Instead, the advocated solution was to “target risky driving behaviours like distracted or impaired driving, not using seatbelts, speeding and ‘incidents involving vulnerable road users’.” These kinds of responses align with the financial incentives when considering the millions of dollars MPI generates from raising insurance rates when drivers get tickets. Also consider that the premise of the article was addressing the pedestrian deaths but the conversation was commandeered to garner support for enforcement efforts, many of which have nothing to do with the fatalities, as the things referenced for targeted enforcement were not generally factors underlying the deaths. For instance, the pedestrians were not killed by people not wearing seatbelts, but those things are being brought into the conversation to create a false association. In these instances, even though children have died, the conversation has turned from real solutions to advocating a certain profitable response — and this process is not unique to MPI. Police will regularly do interviews talking about the experience of notifying loved ones that someone has died in a crash. One would think that at the least, those who talk to the grieving loved ones of victims would want to engage in a discussion about the problems.
…when crashes become a PR tool to advance certain responses that otherwise would suffer from a lack of support, there is no financial incentive in preventing them.
Another issue arises involving the Isabel Street corridor where the four-year-old was killed. The city’s June 2019 report recommended installing eye-level beacons at the corridor, but attached the beacon’s $500 price-tag to the cost of putting in traffic signals at an unrelated intersection, increasing the price to $255,000, and then claimed that the improvements “are subject to the approval of additional gas tax funding from Ottawa.” Adding a new set of traffic signals is 509 times the cost and is not related to adding eye-level beacons at the already existing corridor. These projects should not be tied together, and when considering the eye-level beacons in isolation, there is no reason why the city should be dependent on additional revenue from Ottawa for a $500 project — a cost that many traffic ticket fines match or exceed. Also, it should be considered that when the city took out the eye-level beacons on Notre Dame Ave, the work was so insignificant that no record was kept — not even an e-mail. Something that minor by the city’s own actions should not hinge on Ottawa providing funding for an unrelated project. As of October 2019, we are now at four months after that study was released and there has been no action on implementing any improvements. In the wake of more deaths, there has been no media criticism of the city’s inaction.
Advocating ‘Solutions’ Through Failure
Overall, the already discussed conflict of interest emerges in another way: when crashes become a PR tool to advance certain responses that otherwise would suffer from a lack of support, there is no financial incentive in preventing them. As outlined, aggressive measures are supported by many that have no interest in the ticket industry simply because of an acceptance of what the institutions construct as the problem and therefore the appropriate responses. It puts those who genuinely care about safety in a position of not seeing the forest for the trees. As one final example, consider those who rail against distracted driving to the point that there is universal acceptance for even the strictest of enforcement. This is at the point where we charge a massive fine, take five years of points away, and immediately suspend a person’s driver’s license for plugging in a turned off cell phone at a red light, just having the phone in a cup holder, or using a phone while in a turned off car at a railway crossing with a broken down train. None of this is questioned because it is argued that it might save one life, yet there are generally no arguments made against our roads being littered with billboards. The premise of their very existence is to command attention, taking it from the road — and those targeted are not stopped, but are actually moving at full speed.
If safety is the assumed priority, the city’s actions make no sense, but in the context of the conflict of interest, they make perfect financial sense.
Consider that as justification for the apathy towards fixing speed limit signage, the city’s position has been that exceeding the current speed limits is not a major safety concern because they are politically set. Simultaneously, there has been strong advocacy for more enforcement and lowering of those limits for safety — the logic is not there. This shows that the ironies are working unilaterally and can only be explained by the conflict of interest. Also ironic is the complaining about drivers speeding coinciding with calls to lower the limits that already are not being obeyed. There is widespread support for reducing the speed limits in school zones yet little traction to the efforts to replace missing signs or implement flashing lights — a measure documented to lower speeds. As stated by the owner of one company that offered to pay for the flashing lights (an offer that has been refused by the city): “it makes no sense.” If safety is the assumed priority, the city’s actions make no sense, but in the context of the conflict of interest, they make perfect financial sense. Only this could explain such a blatant disregard of logical engineering corrections. Yet, there are such harsh penalties and enforcement against drivers for offences that very often have little connection to crashes. In the case of corridors, the issue is not one life, but many — and still counting.
…the construction zone already discussed produced enough revenue in six weeks for every one of Winnipeg’s 177 corridors to have been corrected 39X over.
The Untapped Potential for Safer Roads
There is hope hinging on the culture shifting towards recognizing traffic engineering as a constant that underlies crashes, with huge potential to be realized. A study done by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation found that 52.7% of fatal crashes were related to roadway conditions which “greatly exceeds the cost and severity of crashes where alcohol or speeding was involved, or the cost of non-use of seatbelts” (p. 8). In the past, when engineering has been improved, major benefits have been realized. For instance, when the state of Georgia decided to work closely with railroads to address engineering at railway crossings, in one year, the number of fatalities at those crossings went from 105 to 58 (page 138). As another example, the Texas Transport Institute (TTI) studied the effects of increasing and decreasing yellow lights by one second from the minimum accepted in engineering. It was found that a one second increase reduced crashes by 35–40% and a one second reduction from this minimum created a crash increase of 125–225% (page 6–2). Winnipeg’s yellow lights at 80 km/h intersections are currently set at 0.7 seconds below the baseline studied by TTI, demonstrating another potential area for vast crash reductions should Winnipeg road safety advocacy turn its attention to engineering.
Returning to the discussion about corridors, the cost of installing eye-level beacons at each corridor is about $500 (the same as an average construction zone ticket). This means that the construction zone already discussed produced enough revenue in six weeks for every one of Winnipeg’s 177 corridors to have been corrected 39X over. While bringing in millions from tickets, the city is claiming that a $500 improvement needed for children’s safety hinges on getting Ottawa to give a bigger share of the gas tax.
All of the misplaced advocacy can become a road hazard when it leads to attention being redirected that would otherwise have been placed on the need for engineering improvements.
Not only are the financial resources clearly there (just from tickets in one construction zone), but so are the advocacy resources, which if redirected, could be much more effective at improving safety. It is an immense cost for institutions like CAA, WPS and MPI to advocate so aggressively in favour of the ticket industry. If a fraction of those efforts went to advocating engineering corrections, from a safety perspective, much more could be gained. For example, it would take a fraction of the already used resources to successfully lobby for the fixing of the short yellow lights or to fix school zone and speed limit signage. If CAA can stand on the side of the road counting supposed violations for their unscientific study about their opinions of driver misbehaviour, they could find an hour to see a power point presentation on the engineering deficiencies that plague the city.
All of the misplaced advocacy can become a road hazard when it leads to attention being redirected that would otherwise have been placed on the need for engineering improvements. Those advocating real solutions could be much more effective without having to navigate so much misinformation.
It is undeniable that some of the efforts properly directed towards actual dangerous driver behaviour can be beneficial for road safety, but even then, efforts are fruitless if much less could have achieved much more.
To the extent that driver behaviour contributes to crashes, which it certainly does, Drs. Ted R. Miller and Eduard Zaloshnja of the Pacific Institute for Research conclude: “The large share of crash costs related to road conditions underlies the importance of these factors in highway safety. Road conditions are largely controllable. Road maintenance and upgrading, and the installation of traffic safety features can prevent crashes and reduce injury severity.” They go on to say that, “[a]voiding […] crashes through driver improvement requires reaching millions of individuals and getting them to sustain best safety practices. That is not a fail-safe. It is far more practical to make the environment more forgiving and protective.” Engineering is fully within the government’s power to fix and does not rely on subsequent cooperation of road users. Also, if the police and other bodies believe drivers act so dangerously, as the current messaging claims, why would they not want to make engineering the best it can reasonably be to mitigate the effects of flawed human behaviour? When there is driver fault, such as the Keewatin crash, that does not mean that better engineering could not have mitigated the effects of the driver’s actions and have prevented the crash. It is undeniable that some of the efforts properly directed towards actual dangerous driver behaviour can be beneficial for road safety, but even then, efforts are fruitless if much less could have achieved much more. As one traffic engineer put it, if resources are put into saving one life when the same amount of effort elsewhere could have saved 50, “all that we have achieved is to kill 49 people.”
Despite all of these efforts, the bodies keep piling up with more crashes than there have ever been. The only explanation is that we have not been attacking the actual problem.
The Current Situation
In recent years, driving has only gotten more punitive. Police enforcement is the most aggressive it has ever been with a continuous adding of new laws to enforce. Fines and other penalties have exponentially increased, especially since the 2002 introduction of photo enforcement, which also greatly increased ticket volume. Despite all of these efforts, the bodies keep piling up with more crashes than there have ever been. The only explanation is that we have not been attacking the actual problem.
With such a strong foundation of misdirection, the current situation is showing no signs of changing. The Keewatin Street crash was at a new corridor that was less than a year old. Considering the city’s 2013 e-mails and its own study done in 2016, at the very least, eye-level beacons should have been used going forward for all new installations. Had this been done, the Keewatin corridor which was constructed in 2017, would have had these beacons and that crash may not have happened.
This cannot become accepted as normal. We must remember that one preventable death or injury is too many.
Nothing appears to have been learned because after all of the studies, awareness and deaths, even in 2019, eye-level beacons were still not a part of new installations. In August 2019, the city rebuilt a downtown section of road that contained a corridor (Colony Street south of Portage Ave). The roadway and sidewalk were refurbished along with the corridor which had the poles (standards) changed and moved, but eye-level beacons were not part of the redesign.
The city continues to convert more corridors to traffic signals. Most recently, the northernmost parts of Main Street have had the corridors removed and replaced with traffic signals, which substantially increases delays. Meanwhile, the road is littered with unmarked crosswalks creating a polarity of traffic control. The false choice fallacy has developed between having unmarked crosswalks at one extreme or traffic signals at the other now that the corridors, being the intermediate form of traffic control, are removed.
Most of the new traffic signals being installed have eye-level displays mounted near the stop line. This furthers the perceived need for more traffic signals when the improvement may actually be having traffic control devices placed at eye-level. It should not require such an aggressive treatment for this to be done. Also, the traffic signals have a delay between the signal changing and the pedestrian signal displaying the walk cycle with the auditory chirping. If this chirping can be delayed for traffic signals, it could just as easily be delayed at the corridors. In this way, the safety improvements that are perceived to come with traffic signals may actually in part be measures that should have been included, but were neglected in corridor design.
Things will only get better once we stop seeing police, engineers, politicians, and other institutions as purely advocates for road safety rather than parties that can be just as much at fault as anyone else, and often in a conflict of interest.
The Need for Immediate Change
Stalin stated that one death is a tragedy while one million is a statistic to represent the predisposition humans have to be able to look the other way in the face of many deaths. Each death is a tragedy and devastates the loved ones left behind. One father that lost his son in a crash stated, “Our lives will never be the same, and it will take love, faith and time to come to grips with not being able to hold him in our arms anymore.” When crashes have become so commonplace, it can become easy to briefly feel the pain and move on with our lives until the next one, but it is critical that we do not become desensitised or defeated. This cannot become accepted as normal. We must remember that one preventable death or injury is too many.
The current milieu allows those responsible to remain entirely unaccountable as the culture deflects the blame … Meanwhile, governing bodies continue to make millions off of ticket revenue from a problem they are in part to blame for.
Basic traffic engineering is not something the general public should have to be concerned with, but the current situation is unacceptable and the only way action will occur is through public advocacy. It should be apparent by this point that those we blindly trust to protect us are failing. As one article stated, “the same message has been echoed each time from the loved ones of the victims — change is needed.” Ironically, that article followed the others before it by focusing on attacking road users while deflecting from the responsibilities of engineers, which is exactly the thing that needs to change. Things will only get better once we stop seeing police, engineers, politicians, and other institutions as purely advocates for road safety rather than parties that can be just as much at fault as anyone else, and often in a conflict of interest.
One of the hindrances to progress has been that Winnipeg has such a plethora of deficient engineering that advocacy efforts become easily fragmented. It has gotten so bad that basic issues have taken so much attention and yet remain uncorrected. This article has taken a great amount of work to prepare and time for the reader to digest, which could have been spent advocating other issues. Instead, it has become so overwhelming that it becomes easy for each issue to take attention from the others to the point that nothing gets accomplished when having to debate basic points.
If corridors are ever fixed, it would only be the correcting of one of several issues plaguing Winnipeg’s traffic engineering. Raising fines, more enforcement, and more blaming of road users has all been done for decades. It is good politics and a major revenue generator, but from a safety perspective, something else is needed.
Until we have proper awareness and advocacy, there will be no incentive for change. The current milieu allows those responsible to remain entirely unaccountable as the culture deflects the blame. This is just part of the pattern that has and continues to occur with construction zones where inadequate engineering was a causal factor in a crash, but only the driver was blamed. Meanwhile, governing bodies continue to make millions from ticket revenue from a problem they are in part to blame for. To date, there has been no addressing of the inadequate signage that is continually being complained about, with the most recent construction zone crash again involving police only making references about driver behaviour.
The time for talking and studies has ended; it is time for action. Our own mayor claims to be committed to discussing ways to improve safety following the Isabel crash, but even these discussions would be too little too late. The response needed is to follow through with spending $500 to have Public Works implement the improvements that their own report calls for on Isabel Street, and then immediately apply the corrections universally to all corridors. If corridors are ever fixed, it would only be the correcting of one of several issues plaguing Winnipeg’s traffic engineering. Raising fines, more enforcement, and more blaming of road users has all been done for decades. It is good politics and a major revenue generator, but from a safety perspective, something else is needed. Institutions like MPI which raise rates, and police who profit directly from traffic tickets, need to rethink their priorities.
It was a nice gesture by the city to put up honorary signs naming the St. Anne’s corridor after the child that was killed. That child could much better be honoured by correcting the engineering deficiencies across the city so that the next time, there may not be a child killed to honour. The remaining question is, how many more people will have to die before road safety is taken seriously?
“These are the kind of thoughts that kept me out of the really good schools.” -George Carlin
**NOTES**
An earlier version of PART 1 of this work was put online in October 2019 and was shared through social media. Within two days of that release, eye-level beacons were installed at the Isabel Street corridor. Other corridors have also gotten eye-level beacons in and since October 2019, including the one on Colony Street that is pictured in PART 1 and discussed in more detail in this part. Others are one on Corydon Ave, one on Ellice Ave, one on Sherbrook Street, one on Roblin Blvd, and another one on St. Anne’s Road. There may be more, but these are the ones I am aware of as of January 2020 at which time 8 out of 177 corridors have eye-level beacons installed. This work was not updated to reflect those changes as there is no way of knowing how much of it was in response to PART 1’s early release.
