January 13, 2025 update: A 44-year-old woman was charged by Durham Regional Police with careless driving causing death, over two months after this tragic collision.
On Thursday, November 7, at approximately 7:35 AM, a 13-year-old girl was struck and killed by the driver of a Hyundai Santa Fe (a midsized crossover SUV) at Rossland Road and Stevensgate Drive. The girl was riding a bicycle in a marked crossride, a crossing designated for both pedestrians and cyclists along a multiuse path, when she was struck and pinned beneath the vehicle.
Multiuse paths (MUPs) are typically found in parks, particularly along waterbodies such as lakes, rivers, and creeks such as Lake Ontario or the Don River. They are shared by all sorts of people, including walkers, runners, cyclists, dog-walkers, rollerbladers, and wheelchair users, often coming into conflict on busy, narrow sections such as the Martin Goodman Trail or the Lower Don Trail.
In the suburbs surrounding Toronto (and in a few locations within the city, such as on Lake Shore Boulevard East and Eglinton Avenue West), MUPs are a popular form of cycling infrastructure along busier roads with higher speed limits. Older boulevard MUPs required cyclists to stop and dismount at road crossings (though these instructions were usually ignored). Newer and upgraded MUPs allow cyclists to ride across intersecting roadways, at marked crossrides. Signage advises motorists to watch for cyclists and advises cyclists to slow and watch for motorists and to yield to pedestrians. At signalized intersections, most new MUPs include dedicated bicycle signals.
It was at one of these new crossrides that Kirsty was struck and killed. Though no official police press release or any follow-up news articles provided the girl’s name, that name was clearly visible at the makeshift memorial next to where she was killed.
Rossland Road was recently widened from two to four through lanes; a new multiuse path was built on the north side of the roadway, complete with crossrides and cyclist signals. Rossland Road is very much a road. There are no houses fronting onto the roadway, while the few driveways on Rossland provide access only to church and commercial plaza parking lots.
Stevensgate Drive, which leads north from Rossland Road, is a quiet residential street with about two dozen homes and an evangelical church. A stop sign controls traffic at Rossland Road. Though Stevensgate connects to a large subdivision to the north, there are several other streets with signalized intersections that also provide access to the community.
When Kirsty was struck, it was by the southbound Santa Fe driver who would have passed a stop sign and a clearly painted stop line before entering the crossride. A CP24 news report clearly showed the vehicle being towed onto Rossland Road from the southbound direction. At 7:35 AM, it was daylight.
Drivers rolling through stop signs are a common occurrence, even though the law clearly states that a full and complete stop at the stop sign and painted stop line is required before proceeding. Had the driver done so, this tragedy most likely would have been prevented.
Two days later, on Saturday, November 9, I visited the scene. I noted the roadside memorial next to the stop sign facing Stevensgate Drive. While I was there, several people stopped to visit the memorial; at least two people left flowers and cards of sympathy.
While there, I mounted a small digital camera on the trunk of a car parked on the west side of Stevensgate, about 75 metres north of the intersection, in a legal parking spot. The camera, mounted on a mini-tripod, was mostly inconspicuous. Within 25 minutes, five motorists improperly stopped after the stop line and into the crossride; two properly stopped before creeping up to make their turn. Two drivers also made fast, wide right turns into Stevensgate during that time. The edited video below shows motorists’ actions during that 25 minutes
Stevensgate Drive towards Rossland Road (3 minutes, 7 seconds)
While taking photographs and recording the videos, a resident, who lived a few houses north of the intersection, came to talk to me, and asked if I knew the girl. I explained why I was there, and we had a short, but good chat, about the collision and road safety. He noted that it is hard to see traffic from the stop line, and that he has to pull forward before turning. But he agreed that the stop line was there for a reason, and that drivers often rush to get onto Rossland.
Police enforcement is not necessarily the answer. There are too many intersections to watch, and the careless driving behaviours exhibited are normalized. In Toronto, it is cyclists on quiet streets and in public parks who are typically targeted at stop signs, not motorists, even though cyclists are the more vulnerable road users.
In Washington DC, there are stop sign cameras mounted at specific locations, though there are only about a dozen of those throughout the city at any given time. These could provide a useful tool for targeted automated enforcement on Ontario’s roads to reinforce proper driving behaviour.
Intersections should also be redesigned to improve the visibility of pedestrians and cyclists at crosswalks and crossrides and act to slow down motorists; raised sidewalks and path crossings would act as a speed hump as well as enhance visibility. A concrete island or short median at the stop sign would force motorists to approach the stop at a slower speed and prevent wide turns on to and off the intersecting street. A quick and inexpensive (though less-effective) solution could be to place wide knock-down bollards with supplemental crossing and stop sign messages in the middle of the roadway at each stop bar and crosswalk/crossride. Though this is best as a short-term measure.
(Milton, Ontario, via Google Streetview)
As the provincial government vindictively overrides municipalities’ ability to provide safer on-road cycling infrastructure, off-street infrastructure, such as MUPs, will remain an important tool for promoting active transportation, especially in suburban areas and high-traffic neighbourhoods. Though boulevard MUPs provide separation from traffic in most cases, they are particularly hazardous at intersections, especially when motorists are distracted, aggressive, or just merely careless. There is much more that can and should be done to make them safer for all road users.
Sean Marshall 