Ford still opposed to reducing city speed limits
Posted July 3, 2014 2:37 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Parisian drivers will soon be pumping the brakes if a proposal to decrease speed limits to 30 km/h is approved by the French capital’s municipal council.
And the move has reignited the debate over speed limits on Toronto streets.
In 2012, the Toronto Board of Health issued a report calling for speed limits to be reduced to 30 km/h on residential streets and 40 km/h on major roads in the interest of public safety.
The report cited research claiming the chance of a cyclist or pedestrian dying in a traffic accident is drastically reduced if the car is moving more slowly. At 50 km/h there is an 85 per cent chance the victim will die. At 30 km/h the chance is cut to five per cent.
Click here to read the full report.
An Ontario coroner’s report on pedestrian deaths also called for lowering speed limits.
But Mayor Rob Ford dismissed the proposal as “nuts” in 2012 and again Thursday he told CP24 he disagreed with the proposal.
“I completely disagree … This is just going to cause more congestion and delay people’s commute times to and from work, their families,” said Ford.
Sixty-three people died in traffic accidents, 40 of them pedestrians, on Toronto streets in 2013.
