VANCOUVER—Cydoney Curran remembers looking into the eyes of the driver who nearly ran her over.

It was a Friday morning in early April, and the 26-year-old Curran was walking to work in East Vancouver. She stopped to look both ways at a marked crosswalk on a small street. She saw a man driving a luxury silver SUV heading her way.

“I know he saw me; I know he did,” Curran says.

As soon as she stepped off the curb to cross the road, he sped up. She jumped backward onto the sidewalk to avoid being hit, tripping and rolling her ankle in the process. The car missed her by about a metre, said Curran.

“I sat there in disbelief,” she said. “I was in shock and couldn’t put weight on my ankle so I thought I had broke it. My heart was absolutely racing.”

Municipal governments across the country are grappling with pedestrian safety. The latest data from Transport Canada shows 284 pedestrians died after being struck by a vehicle in 2017. The problem appears to be getting worse: A report issued last year by the Office of Economic Co-operation and Development found the number of pedestrians killed in Canada increased by 10.5 per cent between 2010 to 2016.

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And there are many more survivors who suffer a range of injuries, from sprains to head trauma. Ontario’s Peel Regional Police made the extraordinary decision Thursday to wheel out a crash victim on a stretcher for a news conference, publicly calling for information about the driver.

In Vancouver, there were 565 motor vehicle collisions involving pedestrians in 2017, according to the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC).

Vancouver City Councillor Pete Fry is proposing a pilot project to test the effectiveness of a 30 km/h speed limit on local roads — those without a centre line. The current speed limit for such roads is 50 km/h.

Council is scheduled to vote on the motion Monday.

Fry, who lives in Strathcona, a residential neighbourhood just east of Vancouver’s downtown, got his start in political advocacy by opposing increased traffic on Prior St. He said lowering the speed limit for small streets would help keep neighbourhoods safe for families.

“We see with these frustrated commuters, they’re coming in and they’re clocking 50 km/h, easy,” he said.

“And it’s alarmingly fast when you put it into the context of a pedestrian or kids in the neighbourhood — and pets, cyclists.”

But enforcing a 30 km/h speed limit on all of Vancouver’s narrow residential roads will prove difficult, making it a bad law, said a lawyer who specializes in driving law.

“You’re going to create a speed limit that everybody will quickly learn will not be enforced,” said Kyla Lee with Acumen Law.

“High-risk drivers exist everywhere, and those people are going to barrel down those roads at 70 km/h, regardless of what the speed limit is.”

Both Lee and Curran — the woman who was almost struck in East Vancouver — said the proposal is not a full solution and cities should focus on busy, high-risk intersections. The vast majority of crashes in the Lower Mainland happen on arterial roads, according to data collected by ICBC.

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Transportation researcher Werner Antweiler echoed Lee’s concerns around enforcement but said the spirit of Fry’s motion points to an important aspect of road safety: speed kills.

“There is a clear benefit to going at 30 km/h, especially for more vulnerable citizens” like seniors, said Antweiler, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.

“If an accident happens at 50 km/h compared to 30 km/h, the injury severity goes up. There are very few fatalities at 30 km/h.”

Improving road safety requires drivers to change their mentality about getting somewhere on time. People won’t change their driving habits until there is intense police enforcement, said Antweiler, though he acknowledged education can help.

The actual average driving speed in Metro Vancouver during morning rush hour is 32.5 km/h, based on a representative sample of 2,000 trips, said Antweiler. This preliminary finding is part of a congestion study he is conducting by analyzing drivers’ GPS data, provided by Google.

Traffic jams and red lights mean even drivers who speed past others will not arrive at their destination any quicker, said Antweiler. The sooner people understand this, the sooner they will accept decreased speed limits, he said.

The City of Vancouver already employs road-safety measures such as protected bike lanes, speed bumps and reduced speed limits for certain stretches of road, such as part of East Hastings St.

Other Canadian cities are also considering these kinds of policies. They are collectively known as Vision Zero strategies, which focus on improving road design to eliminate serious injuries and fatalities.

Calgary piloted temporary curb extensions and relocated signage in several neighbourhoods last year. Staff found drivers adhered to the posted speed limit 17 per cent more than before the traffic-calming measures. Drivers were also 43 per cent more likely to yield to pedestrians.

Edmonton is focusing much of its road-safety efforts on improving crosswalks, citing 659 that need upgrades. About 70 will be upgraded by the end of the year, according to the city.

Both Albertan cities are looking at reducing the speed limit on residential roads to 30 km/h.

Toronto is spending $100 million over five years in its version of a Vision Zero plan and is deploying additional red-light cameras, reconfiguring intersections and adding speed bumps to certain roads. In 2015, the city reduced the speed limit on residential streets in the downtown area to 30 km/h.

In Vancouver, Fry wants to take things one step further and ask the provincial government to grant municipalities the power to establish speed limits for a certain category of streets or entire neighbourhoods.

His motion proposes Vancouver work with other cities in B.C. to petition the province for this ability. Toronto already has this power. Edmonton and Calgary do as well, thanks to changes in Alberta’s municipal governance act last year.

According to the Motor Vehicle Act in B.C., municipalities can lower speed limits but only by installing a sign on a specific road. Municipalities cannot issue bylaws that create blanket speed limits.

As it stands, if the City of Vancouver wanted to lower the speed limit on all of its roads, it would have to install hundreds of signs.

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