Pedestrian killed today on Main at James

[BCTed]

Originally Posted by markbarbera

Sad to see. The accident looks to have occurred on James Street just north of Main, so I don't think the freeway extrapolation is really fair in this case.

I don't think so either. Your post seems to have been largely ignored.

Sad news about the accident. Immediately exploiting it (very likely incorrectly) as a trigger for airing "expressway" views is wrong.

[raisethehammer]

I was at the scene today.
The body was lying in the 2nd lane on Main. The truck was on the sidewalk on the north curb of Main halfway between James and Hughson.
This info has been stated on here several times already. It wasn't on James between Main and King. It was ON Main.

[BCTed]

Originally Posted by raisethehammer

I was at the scene today.
The body was lying in the 2nd lane on Main. The truck was on the sidewalk on the north curb of Main halfway between James and Hughson.
This info has been stated on here several times already. It wasn't on James between Main and King. It was ON Main.

I sit corrected, although I do not see where the info has been stated multiple times. My sentiment remains the same.

[FairHamilton]

To be fair information from local media reported it was on James Street, not Main. From the 11pm news (3rd or 4th story) it appears to be on Main Street and the truck was a 24' Straight Truck.

My condolences to all those impacted by this tragic accident.

[Millstone]

Originally Posted by raisethehammer

no, I'm here to jump on the 'speeding cars aided by synchronized lights through the heart of downtown are bad' bandwagon.
Read the post before wasting our time.

You don't even know how things unfolded and you're using it as a vehicle to promote your "cars are bad" mantra. What post am I reading exactly? You seem to know the speed of the driver. I can't find that information as of 2:36am EDT 23/10/08, please cite your source.

[geoff's two cents]

Millstone, the precise speed of the driver is not as important as the fact that the five-lane/one-way street/synchronized lights system discourages drivers from taking the due care they would if they were in a city that did not build such costly and highly visible monuments to the private automobile. Main street at James does not feel like a major intersection in Ontario's 3rd largest independent city; it feels like a thoroughfare, and in many respects like a freeway.

Cars are not necessarily bad, but Hamilton (citizens as well as leadership)'s level of dependence on them is troubling. It's mind-boggling to think that these giant one-way streets that make the downtown a less desirable place to live, pollute the air, and that are extremely dangerous, are subsidized at the enormous expense of taxpayers.

This is not the time to be wholeheartedly defending the car-centred lifestyle and mode of city planning. Rather, the most humane thing to do when somebody is hit and killed by a car would be to at least question this way of life and subject it to rigorous debate. I don't think you necessarily need to be on some sort of "bandwagon" or promoting some sort of political agenda to adhere to that line of reasoning.

[raisethehammer]

everyone who disagrees with Millstone's unsustainable, inhumane preferences for urban design has a 'political agenda'
I don't know the speed of the truck, but I'd happily start the wagering at 25 bucks that it wasn't 25km an hour. When you see how far past the body the truck stopped it's quite clear that either he was not paying any attention at all, or was going so fast that he couldn't stop any sooner than where he did.
It's a tragic loss for the family and friends of this woman who did what so many of us do everyday - tried to cross a street downtown. Perhaps she was at fault. Even so, I've seen pedestrians hit 'at fault' in Kensington Market and in Hess Village. In both cases they bounced back up because the vehicles were driving at a humane speed suitable for urban environments.
The online Spec has no info today...did the print issue?

[Millstone]

Originally Posted by raisethehammer

everyone who disagrees with Millstone's unsustainable, inhumane preferences for urban design has a 'political agenda'
I don't know the speed of the truck, but I'd happily start the wagering at 25 bucks that it wasn't 25km an hour. When you see how far past the body the truck stopped it's quite clear that either he was not paying any attention at all, or was going so fast that he couldn't stop any sooner than where he did.
It's a tragic loss for the family and friends of this woman who did what so many of us do everyday - tried to cross a street downtown. Perhaps she was at fault. Even so, I've seen pedestrians hit 'at fault' in Kensington Market and in Hess Village. In both cases they bounced back up because the vehicles were driving at a humane speed suitable for urban environments.
The online Spec has no info today...did the print issue?

There isn't any vehicle travelling on Main St at 25 km/h. That's pretty unrealistic. Again: why was this person in the intersection?

[raisethehammer]

Originally Posted by Millstone

There isn't any vehicle travelling on Main St at 25 km/h.

exactly my point. They should be. No reason for cars to be doing 50-75km in the heart of a downtown core. It's inhumane, unsustainable, business-unfriendly, pedestrian-unfriendly, EcDev-unfriendly. It's pretty much bad on all counts unless you're a trucker looking to blaze through the city from Detroit to Buffalo. Yippee.

[SteelTown]

I'm pretty sure buses don't even go 25 km/h. LRT will probably go faster than 25 km/h as well.

[Millstone]

Originally Posted by raisethehammer

exactly my point. They should be. No reason for cars to be doing 50-75km in the heart of a downtown core. It's inhumane, unsustainable, business-unfriendly, pedestrian-unfriendly, EcDev-unfriendly. It's pretty much bad on all counts unless you're a trucker looking to blaze through the city from Detroit to Buffalo. Yippee.

Wow. That's terrible. Please stop flinging around shrapnel from Stephane Dion's lost campaign like "unsustainable" and "EcDev-unfriendly" and "inhumane" and explain how a 25 km/h limit on Main St would encourage businesses to relocate to that strip of Hamilton. Deliveries would take forever and traffic would suck, increasing pollution. People would be late to work all over the shop.

[raisethehammer]

Originally Posted by Millstone

Wow. That's terrible. Please stop flinging around shrapnel from Stephane Dion's lost campaign like "unsustainable" and "EcDev-unfriendly" and "inhumane" and explain how a 25 km/h limit on Main St would encourage businesses to relocate to that strip of Hamilton. Deliveries would take forever and traffic would suck, increasing pollution. People would be late to work all over the shop.

I never said anything about a speed limit. I'm talking about the realities of driving in other downtowns. Trying doing 55-60km on Yonge St in TO.
Any city I'm in, it seems like 35-40km is a normal downtown maximum speed. I'm often doing 25-35 in downtowns.
How would slower traffic help encourage new business??? Please. We've gone over this at length on this website. Human beings on the street spend money. Not speeding cars.

[Millstone]

Originally Posted by raisethehammer

I never said anything about a speed limit. I'm talking about the realities of driving in other downtowns. Trying doing 55-60km on Yonge St in TO.
Any city I'm in, it seems like 35-40km is a normal downtown maximum speed. I'm often doing 25-35 in downtowns.
How would slower traffic help encourage new business??? Please. We've gone over this at length on this website. Human beings on the street spend money. Not speeding cars.

Okay, you want people to drive 25 km/h on Main St as it is. Explain how you would accomplish that.

And I've done 55-60 km/h on Yonge St; what's your point?

I didn't say slower traffic, I said 25 km/h traffic. Please stop flinging around shrapnel from Stephane Dion's lost campaign like "unsustainable" and "EcDev-unfriendly" and "inhumane" and explain how a 25 km/h limit on Main St would encourage businesses to relocate to that strip of Hamilton. Deliveries would take forever and traffic would suck, increasing pollution. People would be late to work all over the shop.

[raisethehammer]

Originally Posted by raisethehammer

Human beings on the street spend money. Not speeding cars.

[coalminecanary]

Originally Posted by Millstone

You don't even know how things unfolded and you're using it as a vehicle to promote your "cars are bad" mantra.

How insensitive can you be? We are not using someone's death to further some sort of underhanded agenda, unless you consider saving lives and making our streets livable for ALL CITIZENS EQUALLY (not just those who choose to blast through in vehicles) a political agenda.

We are talking about senseless loss of life, and no matter who the hell is "at fault" it doesn't change the fact that someone died. We need to design roads so that so that nobody's mistakes (drivers nor pedestrians) can cause this type of damage to a human body. We ned to fix the way cars and people interact in this city because the way it is set up now is not working. People are dying and there is absolutely no need!!!!!

We are crying out for sanity. Stop twisting our words to further YOUR agenda.

[ryan_mcgreal]

http://www.raisethehammer.org/blog/1130

Yet Another Pedestrian is Killed
By: Ryan McGreal
Published: 2008/10/23

Just after lunchtime yesterday, a pedestrian was struck and killed instantly at the corner of Main St and James St. The victim, a woman in her 30s, was crossing Main St. on James St. at 12:42 PM yesterday when a cube van hit her.

This was the 14th pedestrian fatality in Hamilton this year. The Ontario average is 1.0 fatalities per 100,000 people, which puts Hamilton's pedestrian fatality rate at around 2.5 times higher than the provincial average.

Against the predictable cries that the pedestrian should have looked where she was going, I humbly offer the following analysis:

* At a vehicle speed of 32 km/h, the fatality rate for pedestrians hit is five percent.
* At 48 km/h, the fatality rate is 50 percent.
* At 64 km/h, the speed of the so-called "green wave" of synchronized lights on Main St., the fatality rate is over 90 percent.

Even if it was entirely the pedestrian's fault - and in the absence of a police report on what happened, that seems plausible - the simple fact is that there is a very clear exponential ratio between vehicle speed and pedestrian mortality.

The kinetic energy of a moving vehicle is calculated by its mass multiplied by a square of its speed. That means a vehicle moving twice as fast has four times as much energy - with a commensurate increase in its destructive potential.

It also means a vehicle moving twice as fast takes four times the distance to stop, which reduces commensurately the driver's ability to avoid collisions.

The simple fact is that if cars are moving slowly enough, it doesn't matter how carelessly pedestrians step out into traffic: they're less likely to be hit, and they're far less likely to be killed.

Below around 30 km/h, the fatality rate effectively drops to zero.

I suppose there's a case to be made that pedestrians who step carelessly onto the street 'deserve' whatever they get, but it seems to me that any public safety policy worth its salt must concern itself not with righteous moralizing but rather with achieving positive results.

Will anyone in Hamilton's municipal government muster up the guts to say "no more" to our deadly urban expressways?

[the dude]

for proponents of the auto-centric lifestyle, fatalities are simply the price of doing business. blame the driver or more often than not, the pedestrian but leave the car out of it. no, we need to start blaming cars and getting them off our streets.

so, what's more harmful to the health of downtown hamilton: the 'sketchy' folk in gore park, or the cars and trucks that blast along main street?

[highwater]

Originally Posted by Millstone

Then nobody in their right mind should care about your opinion. To hell with the "facts", raisethehammer's here to jump on the cars-are-bad bandwagon!

Jaywalkers do not deserve to die gruesome deaths. Even if she was crossing against the light, it was the unacceptable level of speed that we tolerate (and sometimes celebrate) in our downtown that killed her.

[highwater]

Originally Posted by Millstone

Please stop flinging around shrapnel from Stephane Dion's lost campaign like "unsustainable" and "EcDev-unfriendly" and "inhumane"

Yeah. Dion is such a loser for promoting sustainable, humane policies. Get over it. Harper won. Start your engines!

[BrianE]

Here is a great report from Safe Kids Canada on Pedestrian Safety. They focus a bit on child safety, but there is still some great stuff for other age groups.

http://www.sickkids.ca/SKCForPartner...ianGuide05.pdf

The report identifies a number of different factors in pedestrian deaths. I knew that Hamilton's roads were bad... but frankly I'm shocked by how many factors in pedestrian deaths apply to Hamilton Streets.

For Example:

There is no definitive research to indicate whether driver
behaviour or child behaviour is most often the cause of a
crash. In most cases, a combination of factors is involved.
Risk factors for pedestrian crashes include:
• high traffic volume
• road speed limit of greater than 40 km/h
• high average vehicle speed
• child located on the road
• darkness
• rainy weather

The report has a lot of great ideas for prevention as well.