Recently, I wrote a column about a few common types of bad driving behaviour, specifically in intersections, that hold up traffic and endanger lives every day on Toronto’s streets. It got a lot of response, most of it crying out in agreement. But plenty, curiously, demanding to know why I didn’t conclude that pedestrians are the real menace.

CBC radio’s Matt Galloway discussed the topic on the air, and the responses led him to tweet, “Is there an equation for how long it takes for a story about bad driving habits to become a shouting match about pedestrians and cyclists?”

There is an equation, as it turns out, as another Twitter user helpfully responded. If “time” is represented by T, the math looks like this: T=0. No time at all.

I am reasonably certain that if I were to write about a wave of drive-by shootings, in which drivers of cars were literally machine-gunning people on the sidewalk, I would instantly get a wave of responses that read, “Whuddabout pedestrians who are constantly looking at their phones? And have you seen cyclists rolling through stop signs? Why all this war on the car rhetoric?”

These other problems may indeed be problems, to some extent. But they are not nearly so urgent and life-threatening. And they are not connected in any way to the problem under discussion. Not that relevance is a core concern among some of the people who respond to newspaper columns online, for whom “WHAT ABOUT GAZ PLANTZ YOU BIAS RED STAR HACK” is considered a universal greeting, suitable for all occasions.

Even if you’re complaining about driver behaviours that mainly serve to endanger or annoy other people in cars — last-second lane changes, say, or people stopped at an intersection who do not signal a left turn until after the light in front of them turns green — a vocal subset of the population will remain convinced that people on foot are somehow the true culprit, protected from criticism by a conspiracy of liberal political correctness and lobbyists representing Big Shoe.

They are enabled in this delusion by many local politicians, who never miss an opportunity to rhetorically share the blame around, talking about “distracted walking” or putting the focus on jaywalking. “The number one thing” that needs to happen, Mayor John Tory said in announcing his Vision Zero challenge to help eliminate traffic fatalities, is that not only drivers but “all others sharing our roads and public spaces” need to be more careful and vigilant.

You know who doesn’t feel the need to draw this equivalence in assessing the major causes of road fatalities? Experts who study the problem.

Take, for instance, the car insurance industry, whose entire business model is based on its ability to accurately assess risk. As Ryerson professor Lloyd Alter recently pointed out on the blog Treehugger, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently published a study concluding that pedestrian fatalities are up 46 per cent since 2009 in the United States, and it attributes the deadly toll to a few key factors: inadequate road design, more SUVs and pickup trucks on the road, and more horsepower in cars (meaning similar-sized cars now accelerate and drive faster than they once did). Do they mention distracted walking, or pedestrians racing across traffic lights on the flashing red hand as relevant factors? They do not.

But that brings us back to those responding to my earlier column, some of whom had a point, even if I think they were off target given the topic at hand. The vast majority of objectors were complaining that pedestrians in Toronto are either unaware or unconcerned with how the flashing-red-hand countdown signal at crosswalks is supposed to work. They continue to cross — to walk out into the road — even while the countdown is on.

This is absolutely true. Anywhere you go in the city, you will see swaths of pedestrians walking out into the intersection while the countdown is on. I think this is understandable, because intuitively, that would be any reasonable person’s guess at what the countdown is supposed to mean. A flashing countdown that reads “20” seems to be telling you that you have 20 seconds left to get across the road. If you know it only takes you about five seconds to hustle to the other side, why would you not cross? That is, indeed, what they mean in some other cities (including Montreal) that employ countdown walk signals.

But, it turns out, that’s not what it’s supposed to mean here in Toronto. As police have told the Star during earlier “safety” blitzes, the intention is apparently that pedestrians will clear the intersection so that turning traffic has plenty of time to get through it.

This is not a good system. A traffic signal is meant to be seen at a glance and instantly guide people into making decisions that may have life-or-death implications. A signal whose meaning is widely misunderstood and becomes the subject of constant debate is worse than useless. It’s actively dangerous.

And the core complaint of the “whuddabout” lobby is not without merit: if traffic is to move, cars intending to turn need to be able to get through the intersection. If whole lanes are occupied for an entire signal phase by cars unable to turn right or left, then no one moves anywhere fast.

Articulating the problem suggests a possible solution. You change to a system where most busy intersections have three phases: an advance green for left turns, then a green for right-turning and through traffic, then a pedestrian phase. If the intention is to ensure cars time to turn, give them that time specifically rather than counting on pedestrians to hustle through quickly during some confusing “maybe walk fast, maybe don’t walk” phase.

(And while we’re adjusting, make the pedestrian phase long enough for a decent amount of people to actually make it into and across the intersection.)

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Give every type of road user a chance to accomplish what they need to, and use the signals to make it clear who is supposed to go when. It must be better than the system we have now, which at worst makes things dangerous and holds up traffic, and at best just feeds a million arguments about who is to blame.

As I said at the start, we don’t need any more fuel for those arguments, they burn hot enough already. As I’m sure a lot of angry people are about to demonstrate to me again, in no time at all.