Heading west along the Danforth after last Wednesday’s thunderstorm, the first thing drivers would have noticed was that the traffic lights were out. The second thing was that traffic was moving smoothly regardless. True, it was a bit slower than usual, but not by much. Drivers — as well as cyclists and pedestrians — managed to get through even the busiest intersection at Danforth and Broadview without difficulty.

Their response was the stuff of a driving instructor’s dream. Patient, courteous, attentive, drivers awaited their turn without so much as a honked horn.

Could these be the same drivers whose behaviour has made Toronto a death zone? Who, despite the city’s efforts, the mayor’s pleas, their own better judgment and, oh yes, the law, have killed 93 pedestrians and cyclists in the last two years alone?

Clearly, a crisis brings out a driver’s better nature. Impatience, irritation and road rage give way to the higher priorities of an emergency. A sense of shared responsibility takes over and the every-driver-for-himself mentality is replaced by the need for co-operation. Suddenly, the automatic assumptions that drivers, cyclists and pedestrians make in the course of even the simplest trip no longer apply. Nothing can been taken for granted; road users must pay attention to one another, make eye contact when possible and, as the sign says, proceed with caution.

Of course, driving to work or the supermarket doesn’t normally involve crisis thinking. But perhaps it should. After all, it’s the ordinary stuff of driving — turning, overtaking, reversing — that can be deadly. The challenge is to recreate emergency driving without the emergency. Simply asking drivers to slow down and pay attention isn’t enough. It’s like telling your kids to be nice.

The first thing to admit is that there’s no single solution to the problem. The answer is multi-faceted. The objective is to create conditions that require drivers, cyclists and pedestrians to focus more than they do now on what’s going on around them — in other words, to assume nothing. In an age of chronic distraction, that won’t be easy. Still, when the traffic lights failed last week and intersections became four-way stops, drivers managed to watch closely enough to see what the other guy was doing.

It makes one wonder whether removing most if not all traffic signs and signals, as crazy and counterintuitive as that sounds, could be part of the solution. Forcing drivers, cyclists and pedestrians to heed their surroundings would itself slow them down and also make streets more co-operative. Needless to say, implementing such a radical approach would require a level of boldness well beyond anything available at city hall. Indeed, the growing carnage on Toronto’s streets results largely from weak city policies that want to have it both ways: free and easy flow for cars and trucks as well as safety for cyclists and pedestrians. We want 20th-century car culture to coexist with 21st-century need for alternative forms of mobility.

We should also consider obvious measures: lower speed limits, reduced lane widths, a network of dedicated bike lanes in addition to traffic calming devices such as speed bumps, street islands, bottlenecks, red-light cameras ... the whole arsenal of techniques Toronto has mostly avoided. We also need to add visual clues — trees, public art, different types of paving — that tell drivers to expect pedestrians and cyclists and slow down. In many residential neighbourhoods, especially in the “old” city, these conditions already exist. Drivers don’t need to be told to travel more slowly in, say, Cabbagetown, than along the six lanes of Yonge between Sheppard and Finch, where speed is encouraged.

Yet when city staff recommended a plan that would narrow that stretch of Yonge from six lanes to four, the mayor and his allies said no because it would slow traffic. That, of course, was the point.

Toronto’s issue isn’t lack of knowledge, but of political will. The watered-down Vision Zero scheme the city adopted two years ago was little more than an attempt to kick the problem down the road in the hope it would disappear. Sadly, it’s grown worse.

So now is the time for honesty. Mayor John Tory and his crew see the crisis as one of congestion. They fail to understand that Toronto faces a much larger question; can the city evolve beyond its preoccupation with cars to a more mature grasp of the multi-dimensional nature of mobility?

In either case, the future awaits.

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