Montreal City Weblog

Kate 20:34 on 2019-05-03 Permalink Reply  

• Kevin 22:24 on 2019-05-03 Permalink

  The police emphasized the victim was looking at her phone.

  Personally I’m for Hammurabic law on lousy drivers. Or at least corporal punishment.

• Kate 08:41 on 2019-05-04 Permalink

  Cops must have been quick to interview witnesses then.

• Chris 11:59 on 2019-05-04 Permalink

  She has a head injury. Surprised they’re not blaming her for not wearing a helmet either! 🙁

• qatzelok 12:22 on 2019-05-04 Permalink

  “He was chasing a ball. She was looking at her phone. The victim was not wearing bright colors.”

  Car advertisers can blame whomever they please.

• Kevin 13:52 on 2019-05-04 Permalink

  Kate
  What else are cops going to do? They certainly aren’t going to issue 2 demerit points to the driver who went through a crosswalk. That might set a precedent. And the person is in shock. /sarcasm

• mare@mac 13:54 on 2019-05-04 Permalink

  No mention she was walking on a crosswalk (I live 100m away around the corner). Of course the paint is scraped off the road by snowploughs and drivers don’t look at signs because they’re looking at potholes.

  But nobody ever stops there, it’s right between two traffic lights and there’s a lot going on on Beaubien. I make it a sport to cross there and see the bewildered look on driver’s faces. Of course I do stop when they don’t stop, and I’m never looking at my phone when I’m in traffic, but still.

  If you’re from outside Quebec you might be in the assumption that drivers know they have to stop. In France pedestrians are King. And it’s a van of transport company so the driver might have been looking at a form (maybe on his phone, mounted on the dashboard) for his next delivery. Totally legal, no blame on him, he just couldn’t avoid hitting her.

  So sad and it makes me very angry.

• Ian 10:57 on 2019-05-05 Permalink

  While I too have had many experiences with drivers blowing through crosswalks – I usually yell at them, they usually give me the finger, honk, or more often simply ignore me – I can’t help but be a little perplexed.

  A few years back, as some of you may recall, a young woman walked between two cars of the metro and died as she mistook the space for a door – because she was too busy looking at her phone. I remember a lot of people expressing their frustration that young people pay so much attention to their mobile devices that they don’t take basic precautions when out and about so it’s not surprising, young people should take this as a cautionary example, etc., but now that a young woman with her nose glued to her phone stepped out into traffic and died it’s clearly the fault of the driver, what do you expect with weak road laws, drivers are dangerous scofflaws, anyone who reports with a different slant is in the pocket of BIG AUTO etc.

  I find it all very interesting.

• Kate 13:53 on 2019-05-05 Permalink

  Ian, I was mostly noting that it was a little unusual for the police to be so certain of the phone thing. Most accident reports don’t include a specific detail like this right away – it takes time to interview witnesses.

  But yes, it also had a tsk-tsk flavour like the familiar “the cyclist wasn’t wearing a helmet” so often chorused by media when a heavy motor vehicle crushes a cyclist in traffic.

  Contrast with the metro incident isn’t quite fair. In the metro you have a short, simple list of things you need to do to stay safe and the main one is “don’t fall onto the tracks.” If you’re behaving in such a way that, despite everything, you do fall onto the tracks, that’s really on you. In surface traffic there are so many more factors. I’m not saying the truck driver in this specific situation could’ve acted otherwise because I don’t know, but I think it’s premature to blame the victim in this case.

• Ian 07:43 on 2019-05-06 Permalink

  Many factors, sure, but “speed was not a factor” and “eyes riveted to her cell phone” doesn’t sound so much tsky as simply descriptive. I’m glad she didn’t die after all, regardless, but I see a lot of people doing some very silly things on their phones.

  I can’t be the only person who regularly sees folks riding their bikes no hands the wrong way up a dark street with no lights, texting. Of course somebody texting while piloting their 20th century death factory smogmobile is common, too, and at least with the texting bicyclists in most cases the only person that gets hurt would be themselves. There’s no excuse for being a ninny with your eyes glued to your phone when you should be paying attention where the heck you’re going, you are a danger to yourself and others.

  That said, I admit I’ve used being glued to my phone as an excuse to get out of a jaywalking ticket – and the cop vigorously scolded me but let me off because the behaviour is so common.