City of Ottawa staff are defending the graphic nature of a new online advertisement aimed at discouraging jaywalking on city streets, saying it is part of a campaign focusing on behaviours will "depict the serious nature of road safety and lead to greater awareness to all road users of their responsibilities."

“We continually flame road violence as an outcome of personal choices yet we all know very well it’s the result of our cities choices,” Tom Flood said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“This is an unacceptable ad; victim blaming road violence is not the city I believe in,” architect Toon Dreessen said.

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Statistics provided by Gonthier shows 25 per cent of all fatal and major injury collisions on Ottawa’s roads involve pedestrians. The memo provided data on collisions between 2017 and 2021 on Ottawa roads:

  • 29 per cent of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian was crossing a road midblock (away from an intersection)
  • 23 per cent of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian with the right-of-way was struck at an intersection by a left turning driver
  • 11 per cent of fatal and major injury collisions involving a pedestrian occurred when a pedestrian who did not have the right-of-way was struck by a vehicle travelling straight through an intersection
    • Tristano@lemmy.ca
      0·
      1 year ago

      It’s wild that this city (read: the suburbs and rural communities that shouldn’t be a part of the city of Ottawa) decided the dude with ZERO political experience and ZERO urban planning interest was the right choice for mayor.

      It might be me being very tuned in to urban planning, but it feels like across the world, and even Canada, there’s a huge wave of urban planning progress being made. People are begining to realize that we cant continue to build car dependant suburbs, but our own mayor hasn’t caught up to this fact. There’s huge improvements in Montreal, Toronto, even places like Calgary and Edmonton are getting proper biking infrastructure. Granted, do see it slowly progressing in Ottawa, but my god it could be done so much faster and with less of this bullshit.

      Like, maybe before this he didn’t know anything about cities and shit like this, but you fucking hire someone who does and have them explain it to you. You’re a mayor now, you MUST be into urban planning and all it entails.

      Apologies for the long rant, this bugs me to no end. Can I protest somewhere? Can I give the mayor some book recommendations? (Walkable Cities by Jeff Speck, and Strong Towns by Charles Marhon.)