When I was 4, I got hit by a car and rushed to the hospital. My mom, a nurse, got a call saying my body had been taken to the general hospital. She spent the entire drive there thinking I was dead and my dad still tells me it was the worst day of his life #yyccc

I survived, in part, b/c the car was moving slowly. The evidence is clear—speed kills.

However, I did my first Master’s thesis on pedestrian safety, so I find it prudent to raise this point: there was no mention about visibility & time of collisions in the technical analysis.

I also don’t see this data in the open datasets provided by the city, but at the Canadian level, about 50% of pedestrian collisions occur in low-light settings. I’d really like to see the time of collision data, if someone has it. (hopefully addressed elsewhere)

In short, time of collision data matters a lot because there are fewer pedestrians on the road at night to begin with, but they get hit more = visibility matters. The other critical policy point is that improving visibility doesn’t rely on enforcement and you can target it

I support the speed reduction bylaw b/c it is based on solid pedestrian safety literature. But if there's only so much money to spend on pedestrian safety, I would have liked to see more discussion of how speed and visibility interact.

I get that separating these issues makes policy making easier, so I don't fault the choice, but the truth is that 4-year-old me survived b/c that car was moving slowly, but poor visibility made it happen in the first place.