Mayor John Tory has announced plans for a meeting with representatives from the construction industry following several recent collisions involving dump trucks, including one as a pedestrian stepped off a streetcar on Tuesday.
Tory says that the meeting will take place next Wednesday. He said that he is hopeful that it will lead to “increased training or increased safety measures” that will help to curb the number of accidents involving construction vehicles.
“Clearly based on the numbers this year so far this is a particular problem we have to address,” he told reporters on Tuesday afternoon. “Beyond things we can do there are things that they are going to have to do as people involved in driving trucks and people engaged in construction. I hope that this can be a productive meeting and that I can have them agree to do certain things, whether it is increased training or increased safety measures, so that we can stop this kind of tragic event from happening in the city.”
On Tuesday morning a female pedestrian was struck by a dump truck after stepping off a streetcar on Bathurst Street at Ulster Street.
Witnesses said that the driver of the streetcar unsuccessfully honked at the approaching dump truck to get it to stop.
The woman escaped significant injury but others have not been so lucky.
Earlier this month, a 54-year-old woman was killed when she was hit by a cement truck that was attempting to make a turn on Yonge Street at Erskine Avenue.
Following that crash, councillors Mike Colle, Jaye Robinson and Josh Matlow called for a pause in new development projects in the area until the implementation of a construction traffic safety plan.
"You risk your life every day when you try to walk to a store, to the subway," Colle said at the time. "It's treacherous."
On Tuesday, Tory said that the city has worked hard to redesign intersections and implement lower speed limits along some roadways as part of the Vision Zero pedestrian safety campaign but he said that more “clearly” needs to be done.
