It has been four months since the collision that killed her partner, but only now is Ashley Henderson coming to grips with the scale of her loss.

“When someone’s ripped away from you like that, that quickly, you don’t have time to begin the grieving process,” she said.

But these days, in “small fleeting moments,” she’s “beginning to understand what’s been taken from our life.”

Henderson’s common-law husband, Darrell Smith, died after he was struck by a taxi driver on Aug. 25 at Dundas St. W., at Gladstone Ave. in the city’s west end.

The 33-year-old had been out with friends and was crossing the street to get into an Uber car at about 11:30 p.m. when he was struck in the middle of the road. He suffered a traumatic brain injury and, although he survived in the hospital for more than a week, he never woke up. Henderson finally assented to taking him off life-support on Sept. 3, their seventh anniversary.

A prominent figure in the city’s skateboarding community who travelled widely to practise his sport, Smith was described by those who knew him as caring, supportive and fun. His sudden, violent death shook dozens of people who were close to him.

“He had friends all over the world,” Henderson said.

The pain felt by Smith’s loved ones will be agonizingly familiar other Toronto families this year. Despite the city’s adoption last summer of its first comprehensive road safety plan, 2017 has been another terrible year for pedestrian safety. There have been more than 1,600 pedestrian collisions this year, according to police, and the deadly toll taken on Toronto’s streets continues almost unabated.

According to statistics compiled by the Star, at least 41 pedestrians were killed between Jan. 1 and Dec. 22, 2017. Four cyclists died in the same period.

The pedestrian numbers, which the Star compiled using media reports and police news releases, are higher than the official police count, which puts the number of pedestrians killed since the start of the year at 36.

The force’s total doesn’t include deaths that occur on private property such as parking lots or transit stations, or collisions on provincially owned highways that run through the city.

Last year, police said 43 pedestrians died, the worst total in more than a decade. One cyclist was killed in 2016.

The number of pedestrian deaths this year suggests the stated goal of the city’s “Vision Zero” road safety plan to completely eliminate traffic deaths remains a long way off.

“Certainly the outcomes would tell us that perhaps we’re not moving fast enough,” said Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27 Toronto Centre-Rosedale), who has advocated for the city to accelerate the plan almost since its inception.

The 42 pedestrian victims in 2017 ranged in age from 5 to 90, although, as is usually the case, a majority were older adults. Roughly 60 per cent were at least 55.

Those killed included a 9-year-old boy who along with his twin brother were hit by a minivan driver at a crosswalk on Sheppard Ave., a mother and her 5-year-old daughter run down on a busy five-lane road in Scarborough, and an 86-year-old woman struck by a pick-up truck driver as she attempted to cross Broadview Ave. with the aid of her walker. A 65-year-old man was killed by a streetcar.

More than one-third of pedestrian deaths occurred in Scarborough, despite the fact the borough makes up less than one quarter of the city’s population.

Councillor Jaye Robinson (Ward 25 Don Valley West), who as chair of the public works committee is in charge of the road safety plan, acknowledged that the number of deaths this year is “far from ideal,” but she insisted the city is “making great strides.”

The road safety plan adopted by council in July 2016 allocated $80.3 million to the strategy over five years. In October, council requested that transportation staff explore ways to implement the plan in two years instead of five, and staff are proposing speeding up the installation of numerous safety measures. Council will consider a proposal next month that increases the Vision Zero budget to $86 million.

Measures the city planned to complete by the end of 2017 include reducing speed limits by 10 kilometres per hour on 39 corridors, building more than nine kilometers of sidewalks, creating safety zones at 20 schools and 12 seniors areas, building 7.4 km of separated bike lanes, extending pedestrian crossing times at 96 intersections, and making physical changes such as curb radius reductions at 28 intersections. The city is also on track to put up red light cameras at 75 new locations and install 186 speed humps.

The city has also created a dedicated Vision Zero workforce that will have 13 full-time employees.

“I think council is truly committed,” Robinson said.

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But some safety advocates aren’t convinced. Critics have doubted the city’s commitment since last year when Robinson and Mayor John Tory unveiled the safety plan, which originally set a target of reducing serious collisions by just 20 per cent over 10 years.

That outraged advocates who argued all traffic deaths are preventable. The city quickly changed the target and adopted the “Vision Zero” mantle.

Further developments this year have also raised questions about the city’s approach. In November, in response to a council motion, city staff put forward a plan to accept donations to fund safety improvements that critics said was akin to treating road safety as a “frill.”

This month, a majority of council voted to reverse a speed limit reduction on Bayview Ave. that had been recommended as part of the road safety plan.

It’s that kind of decision that leads Kasia Briegmann-Samson to believe councillors “talk out of two sides of their mouth” when it comes to preventing deadly collisions.

“I think a lot of decision-makers still don’t truly believe that this is their responsibility,” said Briegmann-Samson, who co-founded Friends and Families for Safe Streets after her husband, Tom Samson, was killed while riding his bike in 2012.

Daniella Levy-Pinto, a spokesperson for Walk Toronto, a pedestrian advocacy group, points out that the $80-million investment Toronto is making to tackle the problem is dwarfed by other cities. This year, New York City announced it would spend $1.6 billion U.S. ($2 billion) on road safety over five years.

Traffic fatalities in New York, which is in the fourth year of its Vision Zero program, fell for three successive years through 2016. Traffic deaths in that period declined 23 per cent, although this is for all traffic deaths not just pedestrians.

“If (Toronto councillors) were serious about it, they would put more money into it,” she said.

Don Peat, a spokesperson for the mayor, said the administration is dedicated to eliminating traffic deaths, and noted that since the road safety plan was introduced he has repeatedly voted to accelerate it.

“Mayor Tory believes that one death on our roads is one too many,” Peat wrote in an email.

Those who have lost loved ones on the streets no doubt share that sentiment. With council set to debate the next phase of the road safety plan at their meeting in January, people like Ashley Henderson are left to try to find a way forward without their loved ones.

Henderson said she is still struggling to put her feelings about life without Darrell into words.

“It just came to me a few days ago, and it’s just this profound feeling of being homesick,” she said. “You know that feeling you get when you’re a little kid? And that’s every day.”

Correction — November 28, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the number of pedestrians killed between Jan. 1 and Dec. 22, 2017 as 42.