FDO said:
Ever driven in Toronto? I wonder every day how some people get their licence!!
What I never figured out about this city, FDO, is that they complain and protest about everything and anything. But, traffic fatalities hardly rate more than a shoulder shrug. I guess it's the price we pay for not having to get around on the backs of animals.
The majority of people killed in car accidents in this city are not even in vehicles. They were run over by them. 50 pedestrians per year. That's not counting cyclists.
They say more people in this city die in car wrecks than by homicide.
And that's just City streets without including the 400, 401, 427 and QEW passing through Metro. The OPP record
those statistics. With 16 live lanes, the 401 across Metro is the busiest stretch of highway in North America.
I wonder if they brought back photo-radar - and donated the fines to trauma centres - if the public would slow down? The truckers weren't happy with the mandatory governors this year. I think they even had a couple of half-hearted protests. But it slowed them down.
It's not just Toronto. I read that in the 1980's ( when we had a smaller population ) well over 5,000 Canadians died each and every year in car accidents. Thanks to MADD, seat belt laws, air-bags, etc and stronger cars with built in safety features that number has been significantly reduced. Maybe people feel less vulnerable now? Fender benders, with the whiplash claims, have skyrocketed. Cheap gas back then may also have had something to do with it.
It's not just the quality of drivers, it's the quantity. For example, I read that when they planned the Don Valley
Parkway Parking lot, that their wildest estimates of traffic volume came nowhere near what it moves today.
Perhaps some would benefit from Remedial Education?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDilD3wAxt8
You're probably not interested, but I remember very well when Black Flags flew on the big old-fashioned aerials of yellow Metro Police cruisers: "Not a tribute to the dead, but a warning to the living!"
umpkin: They used to cruise by the school just to put a fright into us!
http://webhome.idirect.com/~radio50s/#BLACKFLAGS