While watching CHCH News recently a news report caught my attention. A study conducted by MyChoice, an insurance industry research intermediary, published a list of the safest and most dangerous cities in Ontario in which to drive. According to this study, topping the list of safest cities were Toronto and its neighbouring boroughs, as well as Whitby. The worst were Brantford and Kingston, followed closely by Burlington.
This study was based on 150,000 insurance claims filed since 2020. The researchers created an index from 0 to 5 to rate different communities based on the weighted averages of accidents and infractions. Evidently, the higher the score the safer the community and the lesser the risk. Toronto scored 4.5. Whitby scored 4.2. Brantford and Kingston scored 0.7. Burlington scored 0.8.
https://www.mychoice.ca/blog/top-10-safest-dangerous-cities-for-driving-ontario-2024
It Gets Worse
As I started probing into this study some other alarming statistics surfaced. 11.24% of Burlington drivers have some infraction on their driving record, which places us in the middle of the list. However, what I found really shocking was the percentage of drivers with some kind of accident on their record which, in Burlington’s case, was 15.06%, second worst only to Kingston.
No substantive reasons were given as to why Burlington, Brantford and Kingston fared so poorly. The CEO of MyChoice suggested it may have something to do with drivers not equipping their cars with snow tires. While there may be some validity to that claim, I would suggest there are several other factors at play.
Some Theories
- Lack of Defensive Driving. Since the pandemic, many safe driving techniques that we were once taught have all but been forgotten. Notions such as keeping one car length distance behind the driver ahead for every ten kilometres of speed don’t resonate. Advice not to text and drive is routinely ignored. Yielding to pedestrians, signalling turns, and checking your blind spot when passing, have all but been forgotten.
- Faster and Bigger Cars: Forty years ago the average vehicle up my street would have been a Honda Civic. Twenty years ago it was probably a Dodge Caravan. Ten years ago it was likely a Hyundai Santa Fe. Today, more often than not, it is probably a 3 or 5-series BMW.
Since the pandemic, the availability of new cars has been in short supply. Waiting six to nine months for delivery is frustrating for many drivers. Many have opted for used cars, and since vehicles like BMWs and Audis depreciate sharply after four years, these have suddenly become an attractive purchase option. It used to be that I would rarely see a high-end German vehicle driven by a neighbour. Today, they are the new norm. That 1985 Honda Civic my neighbours might have driven had about 85 horsepower. By contrast, the horsepower of a 3-series BMW varies from 255 to 386.
- Road Rage. Faster cars often translate into faster speeds. People like to get where they are going in a hurry. Waiting means lost time. No one is patient any more. The very thought of following behind another driver who is doing the speed limit infuriates many.
Impatience is followed by anger, and anger is followed by risk-taking. Every day I see drivers run red lights, pass on two-lane streets where no passing is permitted, or barrel through crosswalks feet away from pedestrians. The latest manoeuvre is drivers who, on an advance green, will use it as an opportunity to make a U-turn in the middle of the intersection.
- Truck Traffic Increase. Since the pandemic, it seems like there are more and more delivery vans on the roads. Just about everyone is buying online, it seems. Add to that a significant increase in home renovations and the attendant contractors, delivery trucks, dump trucks, concrete mixers, etc., and it adds noticeably to traffic congestion.
- Vehicular Congestion. I spend a lot of time in communities such as Mississauga, Oakville, St. Catharines, Sarnia, Stratford, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Simcoe and London. Any of these places has a better road transportation network than Burlington.
Part of the challenge here is the traffic volume. Everyone agrees it has increased massively in the past five years. Appleby Line is horrible and getting worse. Traffic on Harvester during rush hour is the very definition of congestion. The lack of traffic light synchronization, which many of us have been railing against for years, shows no signs of improvement.
Where other communities beat Burlington is in their improvements to existing roads. Burnhamthorpe Road in Mississauga, as well as Upper Middle Road in Oakville, are in the process of receiving major upgrades to pavement, lighting and traffic signalling. Sorry, but I’m not seeing it in Burlington, unless you count the Plains Road project last year which, in truth, probably benefitted cyclists more than drivers. The city has plans to add dedicated bus lanes to Plains Road. Why weren’t more traffic lanes added during this expansion?
I teach at Sheridan’s HMC campus in Mississauga next to Square One. I drive through residential streets in Oakville and Mississauga to get there. It takes me 55 minutes to drive 36 kilometres in rush hour traffic. When I taught at McMaster’s downtown Hamilton campus I used to drive along Lakeshore and North Shore Boulevard, up King Road, along Plains Road and along York Boulevard into downtown Hamilton. The distance was 21 kilometres. Heading westbound most evenings, also during rush hour, took me nearly an hour and a half. Only ten minutes of that time was spent driving in Hamilton.
- No Police Presence Means No Enforcement. Although I live in East Burlington I spend a lot of time in Oakville. I am astonished at the differences in the level of police presence between these two communities.
Case in point: on my weekly commute into Sheridan police are regularly visible on Upper Middle Road, Ford Drive, the William Horton Parkway, and Rebecca Street. However, I don’t see a highly visible police presence in my neighbourhood. Never. I’m not sure where they are on patrol, but it certainly isn’t in the Elizabeth Gardens neighbourhood.
Which goes to my point: you can’t enforce what you can’t see, and if you aren’t around there’s a lot to miss, particularly bad driving.
A Tale of Two Cities
Oakville, which isn’t listed on MyChoice’s list of unsafe communities, is rolling out an aggressive program of automated speed enforcement. The 14 ASE cameras will be rotated through various community safety zones, and is estimated to bring in $2.73 million annually. Each of the city’s seven wards will have two cameras.
Burlington supposedly has a program in place, but with only six cameras. The program purportedly will bring in an estimated $3.7 million in total revenue once fully operational.
Which begs the question: why does Oakville have nearly twice as many ASE cameras as Burlington if the two communities have similar populations?
Related to road safety is pedestrian safety. Oakville has implemented new pedestrian crosswalks with flashing beacons. You see them throughout the downtown core, as well as opposite the Bronte Athletic Field. They are hard to miss.
I’ve seen only one of these beacon sidewalks in Burlington opposite Central Library. Ironic, isn’t it, that we can somehow find monies to paint sidewalks with rainbow colours, most of which aren’t highly visible at night or during inclement weather, but we can’t provide decent signage to promote improved pedestrian safety.
Conclusion
Being labelled one of the most dangerous cities in Ontario in which to drive isn’t something to be proud of. If anything, it should serve as a wake-up call for Burlington City Council, along with Halton Regional Police Services, to jointly re-examine what measures can be undertaken to address this situation.
There are a number of initiatives the city can and should be exploring to both minimize the impact of traffic volume and improve road safety. Some of these include:
- Working with the province to improve the flow of traffic on the QEW. Every evening there is a standing traffic jam heading west that starts in the mid-afternoon. This problem has continued for decades, but progress has been minimal.
- Turn the north and south service roads into alternates to manage traffic when there is an accident on the QEW and particularly, the Burlington Skyway. Time the lights west-east in the morning and east-west in the afternoon.
- Traffic flow from and to Highway 407 on Appleby is now a major issue. Sequence the lights towards the 407 in the morning, and away from the 407 in the evening.
Certainly, there is no shortage of good ideas. However, I suspect it is more politically fortuitous to keep extolling Burlington’s status as the “Best Medium Sized City in which to live” than to posit constructive measures to resolve real problems with potentially serious consequences.