Three surgeries, weeks of intravenous antibiotics to fight infections and months confined to bed – that’s the tale told by one local man who was hit by a car.
The Royal City resident suffered nine broken ribs, a broken fibula in one leg, a fractured tibia and fibula in the other leg, scarring and other injuries after being struck by a car in the fall of 2012. Since the night of his accident, he’s endured surgeries, infections, loss of income and the emotional turmoil of being unable to walk for months at a time and enjoy normal daily activities like tossing the lacrosse ball around with his kids or attending outdoor music festivals.
“Ever since I woke up from emergency surgery, I have never had a day when I have not known I was hit by a car,” said the resident, who asked that his name be withheld. “There has never been a day without pain. Three years of pain – every single day.”
ICBC statistics indicate nearly one in five people killed in car crashes in the province are pedestrians. In the Lower Mainland, an average of 33 pedestrians are killed and 1,700 injured in crashes every year; provincewide, 2,400 pedestrians are injured and 58 are killed annually.
It’s accidents like these that longtime New Westminster resident Vic Leach wants to prevent. He’s been on a mission to promote the use of reflectors and standards for reflectors since a friend from the Sapperton Pensioners’ Association was almost hit by a car last December.
Leach, a director with the Sapperton Pensioners’ Association, recently recruited a photographer to take photos of two people standing side-by-side on a road – a New West police officer in uniform and a woman wearing a vest with reflective material. With the camera attached to the dashboard, the photographer snapped shots of the pair when they were directly in front of the vehicle and then at a series of 25-foot intervals; at 125 feet, which is about the width of two houses, a person in dark clothing can no longer be seen.
“Because you can see the car doesn’t mean the car can see you at night,” he said. “It shows how quickly they disappear. They are not seen before the car hits them.”
Halfway through Decade of Action for Road Safety
The B.C. Coroners Services reviewed pedestrian traffic fatalities from 2010 to 2012 and found fatal pedestrian incidents were most common during the winter months, on Fridays and Saturdays, between 4 p.m. and midnight. Most collisions (44.4 per cent) occurred in intersections, with 27.5 per cent occurring midblock, 18.3 per cent on highways, seven per cent on sidewalks or shoulders of the road, and 2.8 per cent occurring at non-intersection crosswalks.
The review found that the most noted contributing factors in fatal pedestrian accidents were people wearing dark clothing, distracted drivers or failure to see the pedestrian and light conditions.
When Leach began investigating pedestrian safety, he learned Canada was already halfway through the Decade of Action for Road Safety, which had been declared worldwide by the United Nations.
“It was pushed by the World Health Organization because it said it is at epidemic rates,” he said of pedestrian fatalities. “A study between 1996 and 2007 said that there’s an average of 1.24 million people killed each year worldwide, and 50 to 60 times that are injured.”
Leach firmly believes fewer people would be hit by cars if they were wearing reflectors or reflective materials because it would allow drivers to see them – and hit the brakes. The Sapperton Pensioners Association has partnered with the City of New Westminster and ICBC to focus on pedestrian reflectivity for safety this fall and dispersed about 3,000 reflectors through local retailers last month.
Enormous costs to pedestrian accidents
The City of Vancouver hired a consultant to prepare a pedestrian safety study in 2012. That study stated that the weighted average cost of a pedestrian collision is $234,000, which includes the direct human costs, medical care cost, administrative costs (police, ambulance, etc.), lost earnings and indirect costs for other road users include time and fuel lost as a result of traffic delays associated to the collisions.
“It affects the hospitals, it affects families, it affects the drivers as well,” Leach said.
In addition to pedestrians, Leach would like to see people put reflectors on the sides of wheelchairs, scooters, canes and baby strollers to make them more visible when they’re crossing streets.
“Most of the baby carriage and strollers have very little reflective. It’s something many people haven’t even thought about until you bring it to your attention,” he said. “Would you allow your child to walk out into the dark with dark clothes on? Well, why would you push them into the intersection first?”
ICBC offers the following tips to help keep pedestrians safe on the streets as part of its #walksafebc campaign.
· Always make eye contact with drivers and never assume that a driver has seen you.
· Remove your headphones and focus your full attention on what’s happening around you as drivers may not stop or obey traffic signals. Leave your phone alone.
· Be careful at intersections and watch for drivers turning left or right through the crosswalk. Drivers may be focused on oncoming traffic instead of you. (Nearly 75 per cent of crashes involving pedestrians happen at intersections.)
· Always cross at designated crosswalks – never mid-block. Follow pedestrian signs and traffic signals and never cross once the signal has turned yellow or red.
· Wear reflective clothing or gear and flashlights to make it easier for drivers to see you in wet weather, at dusk and at night.
· On rural roads without sidewalks, make yourself visible and always walk facing traffic so you can see oncoming drivers.
ICBC also offers the following tips for drivers:
· Focus on the road. Always leave your phone or any other hand-held electronic device alone while you’re driving.
· Be ready to yield to pedestrians – especially when turning in intersections and near transit stops.
· Look twice for pedestrians crossing the road – particularly when visibility is poor.
· Give yourself extra time and space to stop in case a pedestrian suddenly crosses the street.
