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In the wake of a fatal truck accident that took the life a 50-year-old man in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Monday morning, Valérie Plante used her first question in council as the newly elected leader of opposition party Projet Montréal to ask Mayor Denis Coderre what the city is doing to improve pedestrian safety.

“We have had 15 pedestrian deaths on the streets of Montreal this year, four more than last year,” Plante said. “The lack of security on our roads are real, the dangers are very present.”

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She called on Coderre to put in speed bumps around schools, sacrifice parking spots to build safer cycling lanes and to force trucking firms to install safety shields on the sides of their vehicles to protect pedestrians and cyclists from falling under their wheels.

Changes to the trucking industry are a federal jurisdiction, Coderre said, and the city has been lobbying Ottawa to create new legislation to impose side barriers. Montreal has already started installing them on their own trucks, he noted.