If you’re hit by a car going 45 km/h, it’s a flip of a coin whether you live or die.

According to the World Health Organization, almost 50 per cent of pedestrian deaths occur when the car is travelling at that speed. At 80 km/h, the odds of survival are close to nil.

But at 30 km/h or slower, over 90 per cent of those struck make it out alive. It’s one reason cities like Paris have put in place, or are pushing for, nearly citywide 30-km/h speed limits. And not only that, say advocates: a 30-km/h limit reduces congestion and energy costs, is environmentally friendly and strengthens a sense of community.

So should Toronto flip the script and make 30 km/h the rule and 50 km/h the exception?

“You want to know about the benefits? Get comfortable,” said Eric Britton, founding editor of World Streets and managing director of EcoPlan International, a policy advisory network.

From his office in France, Britton spoke enthusiastically about Paris’ recent 30-km/h policy announcement and the possibility that other cities may emulate it.

“If you have different speed limits posted around the city, people will ignore them,” he said. “Not because they’re bad people, but because they don’t know, and every time they take their eyes off the road to check signs they increase their likelihood of making a mistake,” he said.

“I’m an ordinary guy — Joe Six Pack — and I get confused like any other driver, particularly if someone is making it difficult for me to understand what the speed limit is.”

It’s not an idea totally foreign to Toronto, although it has already met with resistance. In 2012 Dr. David McKeown, the city’s medical officer for health, proposed city-wide speed limits of 30 km/h on residential streets and 40 km/h everywhere else.

Mayor Rob Ford quickly dismissed the idea as “ nuts, nuts, nuts ”and eventually took aim at McKeown himself, calling the official’s $290,000 salary “embarrassing” and promising to “look into it.” Ford later apologized for his remarks.

Early opposition is natural, says Karl-Heinz Posch, co-ordinator for the European Platform on Mobility Management.

Posch lives in Graz, Austria, which in 1992 became the first large city in Europe to adopt 30 km/h as the general speed limit with 50 km/h on priority roads. He said over half of residents were initially opposed to the measure.

But a year later “traffic hadn’t ‘collapsed’ as predicted by the opponents,” Posch said by email, and the city had adapted smoothly. “Average speeds were down … accidents were down by over 10 per cent, noise levels were down (and) traffic calming had succeeded on a large scale.”

And now, more than 20 years later, despite a steady increase in population and traffic, the number of accidents has decreased by about 20 per cent and 85 per cent of residents favour the lower speed limit.

The arguments lobbed by opponents at the 30-km/h model — that it will lead to more congestion and hinder mobility — don’t sway Posch. He believes the reasons that cities don’t institute the Graz model are often more political than sensible.

“It is mainly the lack of courage (and) fear of the political opponent,” he said.

It may seem counterintuitive, but he and other advocates like Britton say slower driving within the city actually helps move people around faster.

“City engineers can reduce 50 per cent of the stop-and-start driving by getting rid of red lights and by creating different kinds of interfaces at intersections — because when people are driving slower they use eye contact and they have a much better grasp of what’s going on,” said Britton.

Eye contact, he said, can also make us kinder drivers. “When you make eye contact, the other person becomes a human being, and so it modifies your behaviour. It creates a safer world.”

Carlosfelipe Pardo has worked on several transportation projects in his native Colombia and elsewhere. While he supports the 30-km/h limit, he said cities need to know what they’re getting into.

“They (can’t) just write laws and put up ‘30’ signs and expect everyone to respond to these,” Pardo said. “It is very difficult for anyone driving a car to consciously feel that they are going slow, since cars have become very well designed to go at high speeds and its passengers not feeling it.”

He thinks cities need to use physical measures that tell drivers “you are going too fast” or that prevent them from doing so. For example, narrowing the width of the road or even changing the surface material.

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“Europe is full of examples of (successful cities) … The main reason for success is that they took it seriously and really implemented it,” he said.

Correction- July 3, 2014: This article was edited from a previous version that misspelled the surname of Karl-Heinz Posch.