Girl critically injured in hit-and-run
A seven-year-old girl was critically injured Tuesday morning in a hit‑and‑run in eastern Ville‑Marie. Police have not yet found the driver.
Update: The girl has died, I’m sorry to say. TVA says a man has turned himself in.
If anything could make this worse: the girl was the youngest of a Ukrainian refugee family.
Toula Drimonis and Piétons Québec’s Sandrine Cabana‑Degani both comment on the recent surge in pedestrian injuries and fatalities.
Hub 13:23 on 2022-12-13 Permalink
I was driving home to park in the back alley when seeing the police blocking rue Rouen and Parthenais. After some detouring I managed to arrive home, and immediately came to Kate’s blog for intel.
The rue Parthenais and Rouen are both narrow roads where drivers’ eyesight gets quite blocked. And you can always see kids passing because there are parks, daycares, and schools nearby. You cannot be too careful when driving on it. Best to slow it down to 20 km/h and put your foot on the brake.
walkerp 14:28 on 2022-12-13 Permalink
So awful and imagine being the person who hits a child and then flees! The poor parents. I hope the child recovers.
walkerp 10:48 on 2022-12-14 Permalink
argh it just gets worse and worse! That poor family.
Kind of early to talk about “silver linings” but it does seem like that is finally sounding the alarm about how we need to continue to put in structural limits on car use in cities.
DeWolf 12:38 on 2022-12-14 Permalink
It’s horribly sad. Kids should be able to cross the street in front of their own school without risking their lives. La Presse had a story yesterday in which they spoke to some of the other students, many of whom had their own stories about nearly being run over. And some of the neighbours say people regularly drive twice the speed limit down that stretch of de Rouen, which is pretty astonishing given that it’s a narrow street.
Despite some people claiming this administration being anti-car to a fault, they’ve been very slow at calming traffic where it counts. Here’s an article today about residents of Christophe-Colomb and other busy streets clamouring for traffic calming:
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/grand-montreal/2022-12-14/delit-de-fuite-dans-ville-marie/il-va-y-en-avoir-un-autre.php
I can tell you that around here in la Petite Patrie, drivers are maniacs. They run red lights, blast through stop signs and veer into oncoming traffic as they attempt to pass cyclists or slower-moving cars on narrow stretches of St-Zotique or Beaubien. It’s a real mess and you can blame the #waroncars, bike lanes and curb extensions all you want, but the fault is that too many drivers are dangerously incompetent and there’s nobody enforcing traffic rules.
dwgs 13:17 on 2022-12-14 Permalink
We have this same discussion several times a year it seems. Until the police start to actively and continuously enforce traffic laws nothing will change.
Kevin 13:20 on 2022-12-14 Permalink
I fully agree that police in the Montreal area have largely given up enforcing traffic laws.
It’s infuriating to see police officers getting paid overtime to inefficiently override stoplights while seeing and smelling clouds of weed smoke pouring out of cars, while multiple drivers stare at their cellphones every time they stop (or watching movies while on the highway, something I spotted twice this fall).
Driving is a serious matter for responsible people and needs to be treated as such.
Joey 13:31 on 2022-12-14 Permalink
Imagine if some of the $60M extra Projet is pouring into the SPVM (let’s get some more glowing reviews of the new chief from Alex Norris and friends!) was dedicated to mundane stuff like hiring enough crossing guards and stationing cops with radar guns in known trouble spots during school transit hours until the proper tarffic calming measures can be implemented. Given how insane everyone is driving, it would pay for itself. Hell, designate a whole new kind of cop only allowed to enforce the most common highway safety code offences if you need to. And double the fines – just like on highway stretches under construction.
DeWolf 14:43 on 2022-12-14 Permalink
As usual, part of this comes down to provincial inaction, because it’s Quebec that has the power to raise speed fines and install more cameras. And as we saw today, Legault’s first response to the news of the little girl being killed was to say “I think most Quebeckers follow the speed limit in school zones.” Despite data from the CAA (an automotive association!) indicating exactly the opposite.
Get this: there are precisely 12 red light cameras on the island of Montreal. In Quebec City? There are 40.
Tim S. 16:59 on 2022-12-14 Permalink
I note that, according to CBC at least, the driver is being charged with leaving the scene and not the actual act. There’s so much to say about the failure to enforce existing laws, but the reluctance to see reckless driving as criminal in itself is a part of the problem.
dhomas 18:18 on 2022-12-14 Permalink
This is really sad. That poor family. ;( I have an 8- and a 7-year old, so this kind of story really resonates.
With respect to traffic calming measures, the cops can’t be everywhere. We need to put in infrastructure that slows drivers down. On my street, there is a bike lane next to a park. It’s a 30 zone. When I drive near the speed limit (OK, I’ll admit, I go about 33-35), there are maniacs that will pass me IN THE BIKE LANE. NEXT TO A KID’S PARK. And honking all the way to show me that I’m the asshole for being careful. There are routinely cops hiding in the bushes, but this still happens regularly.
I’ve asked the city many times to install speed bumps and bulb-outs, but nothing has happened yet on this front.
They did recently move the bike lane next to the sidewalk so cars need to park closer to the roadway (previously, cars would park next to the sidewalk and the bike lane was in the street). This has had the effect of narrowing the street with the parked cars forming a kind of gauntlet. Though it is only effective at night, since each side of the street has no parking rules from 8h30-11h30 (left side) and 13h-16h (right side).
In any case, all this to say, you don’t need to enforce anything if the bad drivers have no opportunity to behave badly.
DeWolf 19:08 on 2022-12-14 Permalink
@dhomas, exactly. Montreal and Quebec generally have limited traffic calming tools. There are stop signs (somewhat effective but ultimately a very crude solution), curb extensions (great for many reasons), speed bumps (fine) and bike paths, which as you mentioned have the effect of narrowing the roadway, slowing cars down. But we need a more thorough rethink of traffic rules and how streets are arranged in the first place.
In the Netherlands and a number of other European countries, sidewalks and bike paths are raised and continuous, except at major intersections, so a car turning from a main road onto a side street is forced by design to slow down and yield to pedestrians and cyclists. At two intersecting residential streets, there usually isn’t a stop sign, just a yield, but both streets will be designed to keep traffic moving at a crawl through a variety of features like narrow lanes, bollards, curb extensions, speed bumps, etc. All of this has the effect of not only improving pedestrian and cyclist safety, but of making car traffic smoother and more predictable – albeit slower than some drivers here would like.
We’re making progress. Pine Avenue is pretty decent, even though its raised sidewalks and bike paths aren’t up to Dutch standards. But we can’t wait for a major reconstruction of every street to install these features. One of the members of the Agora MTL forum created a mockup of a “superblock” traffic calming plan that would eliminate through traffic in the area around the school where the girl was killed. If the city wanted to, it could implement this plan immediately with planters and plastic bollards.
https://forum.agoramtl.com/t/espaces-pietonniers/3136/127