Montreal City Weblog

Kate 08:40 on 2019-11-12 Permalink Reply  

• mare 09:57 on 2019-11-12 Permalink

  Yup, as I wrote here before, Boulevard Rosemont is a free-for-all highway, despite mostly a 30km/h zone. In the evening, I often try to cross from one side to the other of the divided parc-Marquette with my dogs and it’s scary as hell. I now carry a strong flashlight, to point at speeding drivers when I cross. They think I’m police and most do slow down, often even to about 40km/h, giving me some time to reach the other side of the four lane road.

  A few years ago there was a poll if people wanted a crosswalk between the two sides of the park, but it apparently didn’t yield enough votes. It would have been a dangerous crosswalk anyway, just like the one near Cartier, a few hundred metres away. On neighbouring streets Bellechasse, Beaubien and St-Zotique lots of four-way-stops intersections were created, but that made Rosemont even more the preferred East-West highway. It needs some stop signs as well.

• Ephraim 12:06 on 2019-11-12 Permalink

  And one Youtube video of the police ignoring it with children in it and the world may change.

• EmilyG 13:14 on 2019-11-12 Permalink

  I live right near that intersection (Rosemont/Cartier.) I think that because there’s no stop sign there, drivers don’t think to stop.
  I usually don’t cross there because I wasn’t sure if the cars would stop. I don’t think I even knew that people were allowed to cross there at all times.

• CE 13:29 on 2019-11-12 Permalink

  « Au Québec, ce n’est pas encore dans notre norme sociale de s’arrêter pour laisser passer les piétons, même si c’est la loi », note une intervenante.

  I thought that passage was interesting as I recently had a friend visiting from Saint John who remarked a couple times about how pedestrians are given the right of way so often by drivers. He said that there, nobody ever stops at crosswalks and you basically have to wait until there are no cars at all before you can cross.

  I was also talking about this with a friend of mine who grew up in the same small town as I did. As we were crossing a crosswalk on Laurier (forcing a car to stop pretty suddenly) we remarked how we would never be able to do that where we were from. There, you have to wait at a crosswalk until the car has stopped, then you can start to cross. I wouldn’t do that here, unless it was very obvious that the car wasn’t going to stop or was already to close to the crosswalk to stop.

• Jonathan 13:41 on 2019-11-12 Permalink

  Clap clap clap. So a La Presse journalist walks around the city and figures out that cars are not respecting the traffic laws. How is this surprising to anyone who has feet and/or a wheelchair?

  Every single day I witness car drivers breaking the laws. Not just breaking the law, but driving dangerously. Speeding… almost 100% of the car drivers are speeding when they are not approaching a stop sign or a red light. Stop signs…. I rarely ever see a car make a proper stop at the stop line… let alone actually stop when there is no car at the four-way stop… Cross walk… forget about it. I have to step outside into the street and put my hand out to any approaching car, and even then I am assuming they are looking up and not looking at their mobile phone that is sitting on their lap or on the dashboard stand.

  Something drastic needs to be done…

• Blork 19:31 on 2019-11-12 Permalink

  I think I’m a pretty good driver. Never had an accident, always use “defensive driving” method (“expect the unexpected,” etc.) But I confess that many years of driving in Montreal has made me one of the bad guys at crosswalks. When I’m driving along and I approach a crosswalk, I see the pedestrian, and most of the time they are waiting for me to pass before crossing (which from both a safety and ecological point of view seems to make sense — it seems insane to step in front of a moving vehicle, even when on a crosswalk, because you never have a 100% guarantee that the driver sees you so why take that chance? Also, it means the car has to lose all its momentum and has to burn extra fuel to get going again; why, if it means the pedestrian only has to wait five seconds? BTW, I’m saying this as someone who is a pedestrian more often than a driver.) So I usually drive on through unless I see the pedestrian step onto the crosswalk.

  But hang on — I recently spent a couple of weeks driving around Victoria BC, which is one very sleepy town. Just about everyone drives slowly, and everyone stomps on the brakes whenever they see a pedestrian anywhere near a crosswalk. It took me a couple of days to break my Montreal habit, but once I did it made for a much more civilized feeling when driving. I got used to it, and it also made be drive more slowly through residential areas.

  But it should also be said that driving in Victoria is a highly civilized activity all around, as there is hardly any traffic congestion, virtually no construction zones, everyone obeying the rules, a shocking lack of stop signs and red lights (it’s like they don’t need them!) and no one driving above 40 kph. It’s much easier to be civilized when everyone on the road isn’t on the brink of rage like they are here.

  That said, it still seems unsafe to just blithely step in front of moving vehicles, no matter how civilized the environment. But everyone there does it. Unfortunately they then take vacations to Montreal (and other less civilized cities) and immediately get run over because they think people everywhere drive like they do back home.

  My point? Drivers need to calm the f*ck down, and pedestrians — no matter where they are — should always make eye contact with the driver before stepping in front of a car. (Not a question of rules or “right of way;” a question of not getting run over.)