Leong: We share our streets — and the responsibility to keep them safe

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Stop signs and traffic lights aren’t any use if people don’t follow them.

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In separate incidents over the last week, one person was killed and another maimed in Calgary after someone drove a vehicle into them.

In one case, police say failure to obey a stop sign was being investigated as the reason behind a fatal crash involving a 17-year-old girl who was using a marked crosswalk in northeast Calgary’s Pineridge neighbourhood.

Those who live near the crash scene at Rundlehorn Drive and 26th Avenue N.E. told Postmedia drivers routinely speed through the area and treat the four-way stop as a suggestion rather than a requirement.

In the other, an 18-year-old woman was distracted by her phone while crossing an intersection in the East Village when she got clipped and dragged by a garbage truck, according to her mother, resulting in the loss of a foot.

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Police had said earlier the truck was making a left turn from 4th Street onto 6th Avenue S.E. when a traffic light turned green, just as the victim was entering the roadway.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, a man died after being hit by a pickup truck in a crosswalk on 32nd Avenue and 52nd Street N.E.

Investigations remained under way all these cases.

In the case of the Pineridge crash, area residents told Postmedia they’d called on the city to do something to better protect the affected crosswalk, which also happens to be near local schools.

Let’s pretend the city didn’t ignore those pleas and installed crosswalk lights or a full-on traffic signal there to replace the four-way stop.

It’s possible this could have improved road safety but the mere presence of lights can’t guarantee good driver behaviour.

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I’ve bemoaned impatient motorists so desperate to make their right turn on red, they fixate on looking left to snag an opening and forget to check their entire right side for pedestrians before proceeding.

Then there are the impatient drivers so desperate to turn left at tricky intersections, they don’t look ahead to see if someone is already crossing the street.

While the vigilance of motor vehicle drivers is paramount, given how cars and trucks can easily turn into a killing machine on wheels, this should also be expected of other road users.

It’s really very easy for a pedestrian to get carried away while trying to use a smartphone while walking around and if your head isn’t up, this can lead to a very dangerous mistake.

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This is how things appear to have gone in that terrible incident downtown the other day.

Of course, mistakes and bad judgment shouldn’t automatically lead to death and dismemberment.

I recently suggested better signals and signs, improved road design, and a different societal attitude on road safety can help reduce the number of vehicle crashes that involve pedestrians.

And vehicles themselves are gaining more onboard capabilities, including automatic braking and crash avoidance.

But if a driver is really hyper-distracted or otherwise hell-bent on making their way somewhere they aren’t supposed to, even the fanciest tech won’t stop them.

Case in point: the deadly truck attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans in the wee hours of New Year’s Day this year involved a Ford F-150 Lightning battery-electric pickup truck, equipped by default with collision avoidance technology — technology that was clearly not in use at the time.

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Not helping matters, other safety and security measures on the street meant to protect pedestrians were out of service.

It wasn’t the first time a moving vehicle was turned into a weapon but at least these types of incidents remain statistical outliers.

Under less extreme circumstances, such tools as vehicle-based crash detection and safer road design are useful but they fall in the realm of mitigation: they help to make the situation less terrible in case things go wrong and lead to a vehicle being driven into someone.

For things not to go wrong in the first place, you need prevention.

This can only come with the active participation of everyone who shares our streets — vehicle drivers, bike riders, e-scooter operators and pedestrians being aware and engaged with their surroundings.

And this is especially true of drivers, seeing how they are (ostensibly) in control of a powerful, heavy machine that can cause serious injury or death.

rleong@postmedia.com

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