UTTRI associated faculty Professor Shoshanna Saxe was one of five panelists on “Toronto’s Risky Roads,” an episode of TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin which aired November 5, 2019. The panel also included:
- Amanda O’Rourke, Executive Director with the nonprofit 8-80 Cities
- Linda Rothman, Assistant Professor of Public Health at Ryerson University and Adjunct Scientist at Sick Kids
- Christine Wickens, independent scientist with the Institute for Mental Health policy research at CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
- Warren Wilson, Inspector with the Toronto Police Service Traffic Services Unit
Host Steve Paikin set out the topic of discussion at the start of the show. “Anyone with even passing experience navigating the streets of Ontario’s capital city knows, it’s rough out there. Cars running red lights, speeding, tailgating. Pedestrians dashing into the road at every turn. And of course, the ongoing tensions between cyclists and motorized vehicles sharing the road. It’s not only stressful but also, too often deadly. What’s going on?”
Saxe was the only professor of civil engineering on the panel, and she looked critically at existing infrastructure as problematic for human safety on Toronto’s streets. In her view, “it should be the default that it’s safe, not the thing that we have to guard against.”
She also stated that our streets can be safer for people if we design them that way.
“We’re making a choice to have our city be like this. … the way we continue to design it. It’s not just something that happened to us in the past. It’s choices we’re making right now.”