The morning of Sept. 26 began just like any other for Maria Dorsey and her partner, Jack Miehm. The pair had coffee and, before he left the house to catch a TTC bus, Jack asked what they would do for dinner that night.

“All that boring stuff, it seems like now, but it’s not boring,” Dorsey recalled.

“I gave him a kiss goodbye and said I’ll see you later, and that was it.”

Moments after he left the house to go help a friend with drywall work, Miehm, a 61-year-old semi-retired contractor, was struck by a driver as he crossed at a stoplight at St. Clair Ave. E. and Jeanette St. in the Scarborough Junction neighbourhood. He was about two minutes from his front door.

The impact was so powerful Miehm was thrown 50 metres, police later told Dorsey, and the side mirror of the van was ripped off. The driver fled the scene; a suspect was arrested two days later.

Those who knew him say Miehm, who had two children and two grandchildren, was a quiet, friendly man. At the time of his death, he had been recovering from a stroke he had about six years ago with what Dorsey described as characteristic optimism.

“He said, ‘it could be worse.’ That was his favourite line,” she said. “They say the voice is the first thing people (forget) when you lose someone, but I can still hear his laugh.”

Miehm was one of 46 pedestrians or cyclists who have died in Toronto so far in 2018, a number that appears to mark a recent one-year high for the city.

According to statistics compiled by the Star using police and media reports, 41 pedestrians and five cyclists, who together are classified as “vulnerable road users,” have been killed on the streets so far this year.

The most recent death occurred Friday, when a woman in her 70s was found at the intersection of Finch Ave. East and Wayside Ave. in Scarborough.

The 46 deaths so far in 2018 exceeds the number of combined pedestrian and cyclist fatalities recorded in any year in a police database that goes back to 2007. The highest number in the database is 44, which the city reached in both 2013 and 2016.

The Star began keeping its own count of traffic deaths last year, in order to fill gaps in the police numbers, which don’t include fatalities that occur on private property or provincially owned 400 series highways.

The Star’s count for 2017 showed 41 pedestrians and four cyclists were killed that year, for a total of 45. The number of deaths in 2018 has now exceeded that total as well, with more than three weeks left in the year.

The numbers show two years after city council adopted the Vision Zero plan intended to eliminate traffic fatalities, the deaths of vulnerable road users haven’t slowed.

The city is spending $100 million over five years on the plan, which calls for reducing speed limits, deploying additional red light cameras, increasing signage, reconfiguring intersections, and adding traffic calming measures such as speed humps.

The victims in 2018 have ranged in age from 5 to 92 years old, although more than half were over the age of 55. At least four of the older victims were riding mobility scooters or motorized wheelchairs when they were killed.

Those who died this year include 5-year-old cancer survivor Camila Torcato, who was pinned by a vehicle outside her school in January; 21-year-old University of Toronto student Emma Leckey, who was run down by an alleged drunk driver downtown; 54-year-old Doug Crosbie, who was clipped by a truck driver while riding his bike on Dundas St. E.; and 50-year-old Isabel Soria, who was struck by an alleged hit-and-run driver while her husband was steps away.

Incidents in Scarborough have accounted for more than 46 per cent (or 19 of 41) of pedestrian deaths this year, despite the eastern borough containing just 23 per cent of the city’s population and about 26 per cent of its road kilometrage.

A majority of the deaths in Scarborough occurred on or near wide, busy roads such as Ellesmere Rd., Warden Ave. and Victoria Park Ave.

Dorsey said drivers routinely sped down the section of St. Clair Ave. where Miehm was killed.

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“We would sit in the backyard in summer, and it’s like a freeway. They race down that street, and I would say to Jack, someone’s going to get hit,” she said.

Nancy Smith Lea, director of the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation (TCAT), said the city’s wide streets “really facilitate high speeds.”

“It’s absolutely tragic that people are continuing to be killed on the streets, but it’s unfortunately not surprising because we’re still designing our streets in a way that kills people, especially outside of the downtown core,” Smith Lea said.

She said the road design in Scarborough and the city’s other suburbs, which were planned and built decades ago, have left “a challenging legacy” that can’t be quickly or easily addressed.

As part of Vision Zero, the city has reduced speed limits on portions of Kingston Rd., Midland Ave., Finch Ave. and other major streets, and deployed about two dozen red-light cameras in Scarborough.

But the physical changes that Smith Lea and other experts say are crucial to slow traffic and making streets safer — such as adding bike lanes and reducing pedestrian crossing distance at intersections — would take longer to install throughout Scarborough.

“There’s not a really easy answer. It’s going to take some time,” she said. She argued a key first step is getting suburban political leaders onside with road safety initiatives.

Smith Lea complained that when a coalition of groups that included her organization sent councillors a survey about making commitments to road safety in the run-up to October’s municipal election, just one out of seven incumbents running for re-election in Scarborough filled it out.

Councillor Gary Crawford, who represents Ward 20, Scarborough Southwest, didn’t fill out the survey. But he blamed a particularly chaotic election season, and said he has heard loud and clear from voters that road safety is a priority issue.

“Major roads, even residential roads out in the suburbs, Scarborough in particular, were designed for certain speeds,” Crawford said.

He singled out Kingston Rd. in particular as a trouble area because it’s “almost a major highway, but it is through residential areas.”

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Crawford said in addition to lowering speeds on the street, he’d like the city to consider adding on-street parking in order to slow drivers.

The councillor, who served as Mayor John Tory’s budget chief during this council term, said he could support accelerating and adding more funding to Vision Zero if city staff recommended it.

“Every death is absolutely tragic. We need to continue doing what we’re doing with our Vision Zero. We need to continue the investments, and if need be through the advice of staff, further enhance these,” he said.

Don Peat, a spokesperson for the mayor, said Tory “firmly believes the central message of Vision Zero that fatalities and serious injuries on our roads are preventable, and we must strive to reduce traffic-related deaths and injuries to zero.”

Peat said the mayor has joined with a majority of council and supported expanding Vision Zero, and receives “regular updates” on the implementation of road safety measures “to ensure the work is being done as quickly as possible.”

Tory initially supported a version of the road safety plan put forward by city staff in 2016, which set a target of reducing traffic deaths and serious injury by 20 per cent over 10 years. Under heavy criticism from safety advocates, Tory supported changing the plan to set a goal of eliminating road deaths altogether.