Children’s safety matters more than shaving a few seconds off someone’s commute

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Carrie L. Mitchell is an associate professor in the University of Waterloo School of Planning and a fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

Earlier this month, Premier Doug Ford said Ontario doesn’t need speed cameras. His argument: Why are we giving tickets to drivers going just 5 or 10 kilometres an hour over the limit?

Here’s why: safety research shows that “just 10 km/h” can be the difference between life and death. At 30 km/h, a pedestrian has about a 90 per cent chance of surviving a collision. At 40 to 45 km/h, survival drops to around 50 per cent. Beyond that, survival plummets. At 50 km/h or above, fatalities become far more likely.

Mr. Ford dismisses cameras as a tax grab. In reality, the Premier is calling for speed at any cost, including our children’s lives.

And it isn’t only pedestrians at risk. At higher speeds, vehicle-on-vehicle crashes are more severe, and drivers themselves face a much greater chance of serious injury or death. Speed cameras don’t just protect children walking to school – they protect drivers from each other.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatens to get rid of automated speed cameras

This isn’t new. Mr. Ford has fought against safer streets before. His government has also tried to rip out protected bike lanes in downtown Toronto. Taken together, his message is clear: he doesn’t want speed enforcement, and he doesn’t want safer road infrastructure. For families like mine, living with dangerous speeds outside our front doors, that stance isn’t just out of touch – it’s downright reckless.

I live in London, Ont., on a residential street that is too often treated like a speedway. Every day, I watch drivers barrel through while children, including my own daughter, try to walk safely to school.

In 2022, the City of London clocked the 85th-percentile speed on my street at 52 km/h. That’s the benchmark transportation engineers often use to set speed limits: the speed most drivers are already going. On my street, it means most drivers are already well above the posted 40 km/h limit, which is already too high for a residential area. One driver was recorded at 113 km/h.

Without speed cameras, the wide roads we have created in many Ontario cities don’t just encourage speeding. They turn everyday streets like mine into places where tragedy feels inevitable.

In fact, disaster has already struck. In 1998, a boy on my street was severely injured when two cars collided at a residential intersection. That tragedy should have been a wake-up call for the City of London. But it wasn’t. Since then, there have been 18 reported accidents at the same intersection. Nearly three decades later, the City of London staff are still pointing to the Ontario Traffic Manual’s “warrants,” provincial guidelines that recommend waiting for nine collisions in a three-year period before an all-way stop sign is considered.

Think about that. The official policies say one injured child is not enough. Families are told to wait for more injuries, or even deaths, before safety measures are considered.

So here we are. The Premier rejects speed cameras and protected bike lanes, municipal staff are handcuffed by outdated provincial traffic manuals, and families on my street and many others like it are left waiting for the next tragedy. Mr. Ford may care only about cars, but we care about children. We are the ones living with the fallout of his careless remarks and regressive policies.

It shouldn’t be this difficult. One camera can slow traffic. One redesigned street can save lives. One decision can show that children’s safety matters more than shaving a few seconds off someone’s commute time.

Instead, we are told to wait. Wait for more studies. Wait for higher traffic counts. Wait for nine collisions in three years. Wait, perhaps, until another child is killed.

I have one question for our Premier and our city councils. How much longer should families on streets like mine have to wait?

I’m not just a mom raising a child in this city. I’m also an urban planning professor. I know the research, I teach the evidence, and I understand the tools available to make our streets safer. The solutions exist. What’s missing is the political will.

We don’t need more excuses. We don’t need to count more cars. And we certainly don’t need to bury any more children.