Around 3:30 p.m. on Halloween day, the intersection of Bloor St. W. and Mill Rd. in Etobicoke’s Markland Wood neighbourhood was busy. With St. Clement and Millwood Junior schools both half a block away, kids in costume were everywhere, anticipating an evening of trick or treating. With those schools, and a plaza with a McDonald’s on the southeast corner, the crossing guard here was doing a brisk business shuttling young and old across the intersection while holding his stop sign aloft.

While he was standing in the crosswalk halting traffic, I watched a white SUV turn left from Bloor, southbound onto Mill and pass in front of him. The crossing guard, still in the street, his sign still up, threw up both his arms above his head in disgusted frustration.

Markland Wood is part of Liberal MPP Yvan Baker’s Etobicoke Centre riding. On Monday, Baker unveiled the Phones Down, Heads Up Act, his private member’s bill. A so-called “zombie law” targeting “distracted walking,” it would allow fines to be levied against anybody crossing the street while using a phone or electronic device.

At Bloor and Mill on Tuesday, none of the children crossing the street were on their phones, nor was the crossing guard, and the only zombie around was in that SUV. Statistics prove that collisions caused by inattentive driving have skyrocketed since mobile phones became widely used, while pedestrian collisions due to inattentiveness have either stayed level or even dropped in some places, yet Baker chooses to target pedestrians.

His bill would do nothing about the Halloween driver I saw, nor would it have helped a couple in 2013 who were hit by a driver making a similar left from Bloor a few blocks away at Markland Dr. The 87-year male in the couple was killed and I feel confident assuming he wasn’t Snapchatting at the time. Seventeen years ago, also at Bloor and Markland and when mobiles phones were hardly ubiquitous and few people even texted, a woman in her 40s was struck in the crosswalk while on her nightly walk and dragged a kilometre by an elderly driver making a right turn. Her body finally became dislodged and lay in a driveway for half an hour before being noticed. Yet Baker wants to talk about pedestrians and their phones.

Why care about a private member’s bill from an obscure backbencher? It was telling who and what Baker didn’t address: road design and drivers. In the photos Baker used at his press conference, even his “phone zombies” were walking in crosswalks where, if the light was green, they’d legally be allowed to cross. If it was red, there’s already a law against that.

His riding of Etobicoke Centre runs from the Toronto-Mississauga border east to the Humber River, and so much of the street design throughout the riding, like the rest of the city, is built like Bloor is here: highway scaled but running through residential neighbourhoods. If Baker had any political courage he would direct his efforts towards comprehensive road redesign rather than towards the people being killed on those streets.

Toronto MPP wants to ban people from crossing the street while using their cellphones. Safety advocates are slamming the proposed “zombie law” saying distracted drivers are the main cause of pedestrian injuries.

If you go London, a city of 8 million people, the roads do not look like ours: they’re narrower, speed humps are everywhere, there are lots of bike lanes, and crosswalks are often on humps that slow drivers. Some have said the road carnage here in Toronto is like gun control in the U.S.: we can’t talk about how deadly our roads are, and when we do it’s as if nothing can be done, as if it’s a natural disaster.

Safer road design is a political choice.

It’s curious that Toronto’s Ward 3 fits entirely inside Etobicoke Centre where the local councillor Stephen Holyday has been hostile to efforts to make our streets safer. In March, at the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee (PWIC) he sits on, he delayed Toronto’s “complete streets” guidelines that aim to redesign our roads so they’re safer for all users including drivers, pedestrians, transit users and cyclists. Holyday wanted more study to protect what he called “the silent majority of users,” meaning car drivers.

Last month at PWIC he moved a motion to end the Bloor St. bike lane pilot project rather than make it permanent, saying it destroys his constituents’ commute into the city. “I guess people are going to feel safer in that infrastructure,” he even admitted of protected lanes, but it’s clear convenience is more important than safety to him.

To be sure, it’s a good idea not to look at your phone when crossing the street. I was occasionally guilty of this, but I’ve trained myself to look up when crossing. It’s habitual now, like looking to the right when getting off a streetcar. My hand and phone are still in the same position, so I probably look pretty silly, but my head is up and eyes are looking for cars, a habit motivated by how easy it is to be nailed while just walking where and when you’re supposed to walk in this city.

As with so many things, this good habit would be better spread through a public health campaign than with the time and effort Baker is expending on his zombie law. Take a walk in the Toronto ravines: there are warnings of potentially dangerous things like flash flooding, coyotes or poison ivy. Across the Humber River from Baker’s Etobicoke Centre riding on the multi-use trail, just south of the Dundas St. bridge, is a City of Toronto sign warning of wild parsnip.

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It’s almost startling. Parsnip always seemed like one of those benign vegetables served at special occasions like Thanksgiving, but because of that sign I look out for wild variety, and maybe I’ll stay away from the domesticated kind too because, in truth, parsnip doesn’t taste good anyway. Warnings and public health campaigns can work wonders and change the behaviour of many people. However, years of road safety campaigns aimed at drivers haven’t reduced the carnage on our streets.

Everyone is a pedestrian at some point, even the “silent majority” who drive. This is not “us vs. them” but all of us. The carnage happens both downtown and in places like Etobicoke, too, and people in Markland Wood will continue to be injured or killed until the politicians representing them find some political courage to redesign our streets.

Shawn Micallef writes every Saturday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef