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From the CBC: Woman hit by car in power pole crash at MacGregor school
Quote:A 43-year-old woman was rushed to hospital Wednesday after a vehicle hopped the curb and hit her while she was walking in front of a Waterloo school.
Waterloo regional police were called to MacGregor Public School just before 3 p.m.
Police said a car first struck a woman who was walking on the sidewalk, and then hit a hydro pole.
It doesn't say this in the article, but the victim has sadly passed away since yesterday as a result of being hit.
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(04-25-2019, 10:10 AM)MidTowner Wrote: From the CBC: Woman hit by car in power pole crash at MacGregor school
Quote:A 43-year-old woman was rushed to hospital Wednesday after a vehicle hopped the curb and hit her while she was walking in front of a Waterloo school.
Waterloo regional police were called to MacGregor Public School just before 3 p.m.
Police said a car first struck a woman who was walking on the sidewalk, and then hit a hydro pole.
It doesn't say this in the article, but the victim has sadly passed away since yesterday as a result of being hit.
I have a lot of questions about this; I heard about it last night at a meeting (and went on a mini-rant when someone said "can't be helped"---that is what Vision Zero is about). Central in front of MacGregor Public School is on my everyday bike commute. It is getting a bunch more traffic due to the King St construction. She was on the sidewalk and we can see the substantial grassy boulevard. And the road design doesn't really promote going fast. I'd guess that the car was probably doing 60 or faster. Right in front of a school?!
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In fairness to the driver he could have had some sort of medical emergency and driven off the road due to that. We all know there are a myriad of more likely causes, though.
Out of curiousity, how would you estimate their speed in this situation?
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A little more about the victim, who was dean of students at Laurier: https://wlu.ca/news/spotlights/2019/apri...eague.html
Huge loss for the community.
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(04-25-2019, 11:49 AM)jamincan Wrote: In fairness to the driver he could have had some sort of medical emergency and driven off the road due to that. We all know there are a myriad of more likely causes, though.
Out of curiousity, how would you estimate their speed in this situation?
In fairness to the victim, I don't care, humans are fallible, our roads shouldn't require humans to be infallible in order to be safe.
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(04-25-2019, 11:49 AM)jamincan Wrote: In fairness to the driver he could have had some sort of medical emergency and driven off the road due to that. We all know there are a myriad of more likely causes, though.
Out of curiousity, how would you estimate their speed in this situation?
And yet this road design on Central isn't as unsafe as others in the Region.
I'm going by this table:
https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safe..._levels_en
I'm guessing that it's likely that the driver of the car was going at 50km/h and probably 60km/h.
Weber, for instance, is all too easy to go at 70km/h on. Not so great.
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When I first learned that she had died, I assumed that the motorist must have been driving well in excess of the speed limit- 60, 70 kilometres. But it's possible that he was traveling slower than that. It seems extremely unlikely that he was driving the posted speed limit, which is 40km/h.
It's an understatement to say that it's easy to drive at 70km/h on Weber. But it's a great case to bring up- Central Street has a boulevard and even street trees. On Weber, where traffic often does travel at 70 or 80km/h, the sidewalk directly abuts the street in many places. If a car leaves the road and a human being is in the way, there's little chance for that human being.
This could have been a medical emergency but, like you say jamincan, likely not. It happens all the time, unfortunately. Usually, no one happens to be in the way. Sometimes they will be. Just last Friday afternoon, an SUV crashed into a hydro pole on Weber Street North in Waterloo. No one notices since no one was killed, that time.
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(04-25-2019, 08:51 PM)MidTowner Wrote: When I first learned that she had died, I assumed that the motorist must have been driving well in excess of the speed limit- 60, 70 kilometres. But it's possible that he was traveling slower than that. It seems extremely unlikely that he was driving the posted speed limit, which is 40km/h.
It's an understatement to say that it's easy to drive at 70km/h on Weber. But it's a great case to bring up- Central Street has a boulevard and even street trees. On Weber, where traffic often does travel at 70 or 80km/h, the sidewalk directly abuts the street in many places. If a car leaves the road and a human being is in the way, there's little chance for that human being.
This could have been a medical emergency but, like you say jamincan, likely not. It happens all the time, unfortunately. Usually, no one happens to be in the way. Sometimes they will be. Just last Friday afternoon, an SUV crashed into a hydro pole on Weber Street North in Waterloo. No one notices since no one was killed, that time.
Yeah. I'd think that 50 was likely, 60 possible. But we don't have those facts.
At least for Weber it is fairly easy to bypass these days in Waterloo due to the Spur Line. Sometimes I still bike on Weber because it's faster. I may reconsider that now. The Spur Line experience is just better, except at Union. And yes, getting hit at 80 is not going to end well.
Probably additional street narrowing for Central would be in order. There are often many school buses, and they do need to get through. Speed bumps are probably not the answer. Hamilton has been installing some street narrowing curbs at intersections for that reason.
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I like what the City of Kitchener did on Guelph Street between Margarat and Lancaster. Something like that might be appropriate for Central. There are lots of options.
It's true about the Spur Line being a great alternative to Weber when on bike. But there are lots of destinations people will want to get to on Weber. And, when we're talking about people on foot, short detours can mean a lot of extra walking.
[url=https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4651093,-80.4884856,3a,75y,13.59h,91.54t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s65NUZYprt1rf164T135JwA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192][/url]
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(04-26-2019, 06:28 AM)MidTowner Wrote: I like what the City of Kitchener did on Guelph Street between Margarat and Lancaster. Something like that might be appropriate for Central. There are lots of options.
It's true about the Spur Line being a great alternative to Weber when on bike. But there are lots of destinations people will want to get to on Weber. And, when we're talking about people on foot, short detours can mean a lot of extra walking.
[url=https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4651093,-80.4884856,3a,75y,13.59h,91.54t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s65NUZYprt1rf164T135JwA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192][/url]
Yep. Bump-outs are probably appropriate.
I'd say that the destinations are more towards Bridgeport (where I live), which is not really close to Spur Line. Then a couple of small destinations near Union and Spur Line. But there aren't that many destinations for people walking on Weber between Bridgeport and Victoria, really.
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I'm hesitant to pin this on speed without further information. Certainly risk of fatalities increase with speed and I think bump outs are one of the best ways to reduce speed on minor streets. I also think non-collector streets should only be wide enough for two cars to pass slowly.
In this particular instance, though, I'm not sure the interventions would help. There's a reasonable chance that hitting the curb caused an sudden acceleration, so even if he was initially going slow, the collision would happen at a much higher speed. If it was a medical emergency that caused him to go off the road, there's not a whole lot we can do without putting up some sort of barrier. If it was distraction from a phone or radio or food or something, narrower roads might make the driver less inclined to divert their attention from the road in that situation. A lot of drivers exhibit very poor judgement when their rushed or frustrated or tired or...
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(04-25-2019, 11:49 AM)jamincan Wrote: In fairness to the driver he could have had some sort of medical emergency and driven off the road due to that. We all know there are a myriad of more likely causes, though.
I think that would be the only reasonable excuse for the accident. Somehow I feel that it might have been distracted driving, but we won't know anything until the police finish their investigation and tell us the details. Sad story either way. For the family of the victim, and for the driver, as he has to live with this the rest of his life.
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05-21-2019, 02:10 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-21-2019, 02:10 PM by danbrotherston.)
Apparently although our traffic engineers feel this is an inappropriate solution, the private sector is going to test it out.
(To clarify, I'm not in agreement with our city's traffic engineers).
https://www.reddit.com/r/waterloo/commen...illusions/
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Please provide where our traffic engineers say specifically that this is an “inappropriate solution”!
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(05-21-2019, 07:14 PM)creative Wrote: Please provide where our traffic engineers say specifically that this is an “inappropriate solution”!
I don't know where they might have said that specific thing but are you really surprised by them saying something like that? There are lots of examples of similar things they say. Like the pedestrian crosswalk at Laurel Trail and Bridgeport for instance. Somehow we can't have a light at both Laurel Trail and Peppler.
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