Big number: 2% and 4% — the estimated percentage of Toronto pedestrians and cyclists killed or injured who are hit by drivers making right turns on red lights.

At the risk of making drivers see, well, red, I think it’s time to ask the question: should Toronto ban right turns at red lights?

I’ve been pondering the issue after seeing an item about red right turns from Coun. Mike Layton on the agenda for this Wednesday’s meeting of the infrastructure and environment committee at city hall. Layton wants transportation staff to report on a strategy to “proactively use right-turns-on-red prohibitions” to make roads safer for pedestrians.

His request doesn’t call for a blanket ban on cars making right turns while faced with a red light, but maybe it should.

A right-turn-on-red ban that applies to the busy pedestrian area in the downtown core – with boundaries initially stretching from, for example, Bathurst Street to the Don Valley Parkway, and the lake to Bloor Street — is not an outlandish idea. New York City and Montreal have long had blanket bans. Their urban traffic is bad, but isn’t measurably worse than Toronto or other big cities that continue to permit rights on red.

And for drivers, a no-right-on-red zone could actually be preferable to a patchwork approach. Instead of having to hunt through the jumble of signs posted at every intersection to see if a turn on a red is allowed, it would be simpler to just know that in the downtown core there’s no turning without a green light.

Skeptics will no doubt point to data showing that right turns at red lights are not the cause of a large proportion of accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists. A report by the city’s transportation department released last year notes that historically about two per cent of collisions where pedestrians are killed or injured, and four per cent of cyclist collisions, have occurred when drivers were turning right at a red light.

But here’s the thing: those percentages are people.

According to numbers tracked by the city, more than 2,500 pedestrians and 650 cyclists were killed or seriously injured between 2005 and 2018. Reducing those numbers by two and four per cent, respectively, would mean eliminating potential tragedy for about 50 pedestrians and 26 cyclists.

Other jurisdictions offer more data. A 1982 study conducted after American states started to permit rights on red as a fuel-savings strategy in the 1970s found “significant increases in pedestrian and bicyclist accidents involving right-turning vehicles” in the years after right turns on red became legal.

The study, published in the Journal of Safety Research, posited that collisions spiked because “drivers stopped for a red light are looking left for a gap in traffic and do not see pedestrians and bicyclists coming from their right.”

An important caveat: a lot of those cyclists weren’t following the law, riding on the sidewalk or even on the wrong side of the street. This kind of behaviour is unacceptable, but the consequence should be a traffic ticket, not a collision.

For pedestrians, the situation is more cut and dried. Many of the close calls I’ve had with drivers have been at intersections where I’m making a legal crossing and drivers aren’t checking before gunning the engine to make a right turn. Too often they get stuck blocking crosswalks as they nose forward.

That kind of behaviour doesn’t really show up in the statistics tracked by the city, but it matters. The goal of Toronto’s road safety plan shouldn’t simply be to reduce the odds of getting smoked by a car. The goal should be to make walking and cycling a downright pleasant way to get around.

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Eliminating right turns on red could help do that, making traffic more predictable and making it more clear who has the right-of-way.

It would also have the benefit of being something that could get done quick. Toronto’s road safety plan is well-funded and comprehensive, but it’s built on an approach that requires detailed studies and construction work that takes time to plan and execute. A right-turn-on-red prohibition could happen separate from that activity. It would be a bold and immediate improvement for pedestrians — and a signal that Toronto’s priorities have turned.