In the lefty news site Straight Goods, our favourite cycling lawyer, Albert Koehl, weighs in on the lethal cost of automobiles. You may also know Koehl from helping to push the cycling agenda with the province, perhaps one reason why the provincial Environmental Commissioner mentioned Toronto's slow pace of bike lanes.
Darcy Allan Sheppard accomplished this year what almost 3,000 other Canadians will fail to do: get more than fleeting public attention for his death on our roads. If Sheppard's death had not occurred in downtown Toronto, in gruesome circumstances, and under the wheels of a car driven by Ontario's former top law-maker, the public would already have forgotten his name.
While the tragedy on Toronto's Bloor St. may have highlighted the frailty of the human body in conflicts with the car, the fact is occupants of cars are hardly safe from the danger on our roads.
Although cyclists are over-represented in road fatalities, the most common victims of road accidents are drivers and their passengers, comprising three quarters of all deaths. Motor vehicle occupants also count heavily among the 20,000 Canadians wounded so seriously by motor vehicles each year that they require hospital care, often for long terms.
So routine are serious traffic accidents that we more often hear about them as obstacles in the morning traffic report than in news headlines.
Cars aren't deadly just because of collisions.
