Fifteen pedestrians were struck by vehicles in Toronto on Tuesday, almost three times the city’s daily average.

The next day, Mayor John Tory and the head of the city’s public works and infrastructure committee called an emergency meeting “to discuss the alarming number of fatalities and collisions on our roads.”

The collisions on Tuesday included one in North York that left a woman dead. Lighting and bad weather played a role in the tally, said Toronto Police Const. Clint Stibbe.

The daily average is 5.2 pedestrians struck by vehicles per day, Stibbe said.

An earlier estimate had the number of pedestrians struck Tuesday at 22. Stibbe said the confusion came from multiple reports of the same collisions.

“Quite often there are calls from different locations for the same event,” he said.

“What happens is we will get multiple calls for the same event. People will report from different intersections and they will be referring to the same incident,” Stibbe said.

There were 42 collisions overall on Tuesday, including one involving a cyclist.

At least 16 of the accidents police responded to on Tuesday came within two hours, starting at around 6 p.m., during a “crappy” and wet night in the city, Const. Craig Brister said Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, an 87-year-old woman died after being struck by a vehicle near Sheppard Ave. W. and Bathurst St. in North York around 7:30 a.m.

At around 6:30 p.m., police responded to another serious collision involving two pedestrians in the Queen St. E. and Dalhousie St. area. Both were transported to the hospital, one with serious injuries.

At the same time, police said, an 84-year-old man trying to cross King St. W. at Dufferin St. was struck by 20-year-old man driving a Smart car. The senior suffered life-threatening injuries and was taken to hospital.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Tory and Robinson vow to improve pedestrian safety, especially for seniors. Eighty-five per cent of pedestrian fatalities so far in 2016 were Torontonians aged 55 and older, according to a news release from Tory’s office.

“Too many people are dying as a result of collisions and we must all do more to prevent these deaths, and protect our citizens across the city,” the statement reads.

Tory and Robinson promise to speed up the installation of better lighting, signage, and mid-block crosswalks in neighbourhoods “with high seniors populations”, and boost Toronto’s calls to Queens Park for the introduction of traffic cameras.

A new “public education campaign” for 2017 is also in the works, as is a request for General Manager of Transportation Barbara Gray to look into road safety as a “priority mandate”, and consider possible responses.

In the majority of Tuesday’s accidents, the pedestrians suffered only minor injuries, according to police and Toronto paramedics.

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The last time police saw a similar surge in pedestrian accidents was between Nov. 2 and Nov. 3, when 14 pedestrians were hit between sunset and the next morning.

Police are advising drivers, pedestrians and cyclists to be extra cautious while driving as the roads become more slippery.

With files from Sophie Van Bastelaer, Brennan Doherty, and Fakiha Baig

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