The rebuilt Queens Quay Blvd., re-opened in June after extensive reconstruction, is a new kind of street in Toronto. Paved partly in coloured stone, featuring wide walks, a separated bike track and a streetcar right-of-way, it’s interesting and beautiful, as some of my colleagues have noted. Shawn Micallef even wondered in these pages, “Are we allowed to have something this nice?”

Unfortunately, right now, it seems to me it’s also kind of a death trap. People on it are constantly playing a dangerous game of “whose lane is it anyway?”

Out observing the road on Monday, I quickly became aware that a solid majority of people have no idea how to drive on it. It was almost comical to hum “Yakety Sax” in my head: drivers stopped suddenly, staring head-on into the eyes of other drivers; performed panicked, undercarriage-scraping, Dukes of Hazzard-style jumps off the streetcar right-of-way; did confused three-point turns through intersections and across bicycle and streetcar lanes in an effort to find their proper lane.

Funny as it was to watch for a bit, it was also somewhat terrifying. If changes aren’t made, people are likely to die.

At Lower Spadina, car after car quickly and confidently turns left eastbound into the streetcar right-of-way before swerving back dramatically back toward the proper lane. There, they sometimes meet face-to-face with drivers going in the other direction — some of whom have turned wide out of a nearby driveway, others swerving out into oncoming traffic to go around taxis stopped for long periods blocking the only westbound lane.

At York St., things get even more confusing. There are two eastbound car lanes, one on each side of the streetcar tracks. The south one, meant to provide local access to buildings on that side, is paved in stone, and many car drivers correctly entering it suddenly think they are in the bike lane. Many stop in confusion, blocking lineups of cars following behind them in the intersection. I saw half a dozen cars reverse into the intersection and into the actual bike and pedestrian paths to turn around. Cyclists approaching from the east meanwhile, also tend to think it’s part of the bike lane, and pedal aggressively into oncoming car traffic. There are no markings or signs indicating what kind of vehicle should be in the lane or which direction vehicles in it should be travelling.

North of the streetcar tracks at York, there’s one car lane in each direction paved in traditional blacktop. Twice in 20 minutes I saw cars come face to face, their drivers each making “you’re in the wrong lane” gestures at each other. Despite the solid yellow line in the middle of the road, drivers westbound seem to feel intuitively that the eastbound lane is a passing or left-turn lane meant for them. Many drivers turning onto the street eastbound have the same intuition and wind up in the streetcar lane. Seeing the streetcar tunnel ahead, they then swerve off the elevated platform, grinding and crunching their way down onto the road.

Waterfront Toronto spokesperson Andrew Hilton has told the Star that the street has the required signs and markings to conform to Ministry of Transportation guidelines.

Those markings are not getting the job done.

You could blame drivers for not paying close attention, but most of those I saw were attentively (and usually slowly) trying — and failing — to figure out where they were supposed to be. No matter whose fault it is, a huge percentage of people on the road are baffled. Understandably so.

This is a new kind of street. It takes intuitive signals about how streets work, patterns people have spent a lifetime learning, and up-ends them. That can be a good thing, but there have to be some instructions.

Lights marked with a red “X” hanging over a lane, the kind that allow drivers to understand the weirdo reversible lane on Jarvis, might work here. Maybe some paint on the streetcar right-of-way to indicate it’s something different that cars shouldn’t turn into. Or some old-fashioned do-not-enter signs, or some arrows on the road simply indicating the correct direction of travel.

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I didn’t set out to write a column critical of the street. I went out to take notes about what I like about the new Queens Quay. But I was confronted by an unmistakable series of near-accidents that made me fear I might witness someone’s death.

There’s plenty worth celebrating about the street’s design. But let’s keep the corks in the champagne for a bit longer while we install some markings that will show people how to safely use it.