On Nov. 29, in broad daylight on a sunny day in mid-morning traffic, a young girl was hit by not one, but two cars while attempting to cross West 3rd between Lonsdale and Chesterfield Avenue.
Stepping out between two parked cars, not at a marked crosswalk, she was hit first by a westbound car, then a second eastbound vehicle.
Now, where do your sympathies lie? With the driver? With the injured girl? A recent column in our sister publication the Vancouver Courier condemned what it saw as a focus by ICBC and the VPD on warning pedestrians to wear bright clothing and make themselves seen, instead of a campaign to make drivers more aware, but did either driver really have a chance in this situation?
It's hard to say: West 3rd has a relatively low speed limit, but who can tell what speeds either vehicle was travelling at. Moreover, if the teenager in question really did dart out without warning, would even a slow-moving vehicle have had time to react?
Rather than assessing blame, my thought as a parent of a toddler is: a decade from now, what if my own child were to make such an error in judgement? Human beings are fallible, both behind the wheel and on foot, but nobody deserves this kind of punishment. Not the injured child, not the parents, not the drivers who stuck her and now have to live with that hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach.
As a motorist, you can take this well-publicized incident as a reminder to expect the unexpected. It's also well worth pointing out here that many drivers could also do much better at expecting the expected, preparing to stop at crosswalks and remembering — as so few do — that any intersection, whether marked or not, is a crosswalk where a pedestrian has the right of way. Even if you have to stop eight times instead of four on your way across the city, the net add to your travel time is perhaps five minutes or so, so you might as well be prepared to stop.
Currently, that's all we can do to prevent such an occurrence from entering our lives. That, and remind ourselves that something like 75 per cent of pedestrian collisions occur in a marked crosswalk or intersection. Stats like that indicate that we just aren't paying enough attention behind the wheel, and that we could do a better job.
But here's a question for you: what if our cars could be doing a better job as well? Currently, we've got anti-lock brakes to help out when we need to stop in a hurry in poor conditions, vehicle dynamic control to haul on the reins when our car slips in the snow or ice, blind spot warnings when we don't check our mirrors carefully enough, and lane-departure and collision warnings when our attention wanders.
There is a school of thought that all these driver aids actually hinder us from becoming better drivers, and move attention away from better driver education. However, even if we immediately made getting your driver's license more demanding, it'd take an entire generation to make much of a difference on the roads.
In the meantime, manufacturers are already responding with next level collision avoidance systems. In the case of the accident we're talking about, these theoretically would have reacted swifter than any human reflexes and simply stopped the car before it hit anyone. There'd have been a few choice words, I'm sure, and a honk or two, but nothing permanent except for a fright.
Well, maybe. Pedestrian detection and avoidance systems have come a long way recently, but fresh in most people's memories are the several times in which demonstrations have failed somewhat spectacularly. You'd find few volunteers to stand in front of a driverless, onrushing Volvo, for instance.
However, Volvo's latest urban-friendly collision avoidance technology, set to debut on the upcoming XC90, does look like its got the bugs worked out. Ford also is debuting a system in their European models that can detect pedestrians and cyclists, and will automatically brake to avoid a collision with them.
Part of the success of new auto-braking systems is a growing prevalence of high-sensitivity cameras and the ability to combine them with radar detection for better accuracy. At first, these will be luxury features, but as costs come down, next generation driver assists will become as widespread as rearview cameras now are.
There's also some assistance from the crashtest regulators. Last year, the IIHS introduced a category evaluating vehicles on their ability to avoid having a collision in the first place.
Adoption of technologies like these is always somewhat slow, starting out with available packages on the luxury brands, and spreading out when bundled with adaptive cruise control and other features. However, now even cars as basic as the sub-$10,000 Nissan Micra come with stability control, so it may only be a matter of time before automatic pedestrian avoidance is readily available. It's one of those things you think you might not need but would be perfectly happy if everyone else had it on their vehicle, particularly when you set foot off the curb.
In the meantime, the hope is that last month's accident isn't just a reminder to pedestrians of their vulnerability, but a reminder to drivers of the consequences of a moment's inattention on behalf of either road user. The days are short, the evenings are dark and wet, and even when we do have a rare sunny day, you have to keep your eyes open.
For now, we'll wish that young girl a speedy recovery, and express the hope that everyone makes it through the busy holiday season without another story like this one. If you're on foot, think twice about jaywalking. If you're behind the wheel and approaching an intersection, check twice. The responsibility lies with all of us.
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and automotive enthusiast. If you have a suggestion for a column please contact him at [email protected]. Follow Brendan on Twitter: @brendan_mcaleer.
