Many pedestrians die or are severely injured in Ontario while why these tragedies occur is largely unknown by those who are dying and being injured. A large expense is incurred by employing police to document these incidents but then the results are transferred into a secretive holding facility that never sees that public’s light of day.
There are some favoured researchers who are given permission to see some of these results and those results are presented at various safety conferences. Those researchers meet, shake hands, and enter into discussions amongst themselves. But none of this ever reaches the eyes and ears of those being injured and killed.
The government of Ontario publishes the Ontario Road Safety Annual Report (ORSAR) which summarizes the results from Ontario’s police collision reports. The charts and tables contained in such reports are often misleading. While it would appear that the frequency of certain collision types is accurate one can look at the descriptions in articles published by local news-gathering organizations to recognize that those frequencies do not portray what is actually occurring on Ontario’s roads. Because collisions are classified according to the first harmful event results such as drownings or fires are rarely noted because they are almost always consequences that occur after the first harmful event.
The present article will focus on pedestrian collisions in southern Ontario. The vast majority of these collisions are never publicly reported. Nor is there any information about how and why they occurred. This leads to an examination of the small segment collisions that are the most severe because it is expected that many of these would be reported.
The data below is from Ontario’s Road Safety Annual Reports and provides some broad indication of the numbers of fatal collisions that have recently occurred.
Since nothing is available to understand how these collisions occurred the only available source is from published news media articles. But these are difficult to track. In many instances news organizations require that a person pay a fee to access their articles. While the numbers of news gathering organizations has declined rapidly in recent years it is still difficult to visit each one in a particular part of Ontario to see what pedestrian collisions have been reported. Gorski Consulting has attempted to document these articles where possible however there are areas of the province where such documentation was not possible.
The following table provides a summary of all the pedestrian collision articles that have been documented by Gorski Consulting between 2021 and 2025.
While there appears to be a rise in the number of collisions in 2024 and 2025, it must be understood that these frequencies may have little relationship to what has been occurring in Ontario because of the small number of incidents that have been documented, although further inquiry might been needed.
The next table may be more revealing because it displays the number of fatal pedestrian collisions. Here the data may be a little more accurate because fatal collisions are less likely to be unreported in Ontario.
The data from the above table can be compared to the ORSAR data shown at the beginning of this article. The ORSAR data shows that the number of fatal pedestrian collisions fluctuated around 100 incidents per year. And the Gorski Consulting data shows 38 to 61 collisions per year have documented in the Gorski Consulting review of news media articles. Again, it was not possible to canvas all areas of the province so it is understandable that about 50% of the fatal collisions have not been captured in the Gorski Consulting data.
However we can also examine the number of collisions where the injury results were described as “life-threatening” or “critical”. It would be expected that a significant number of such collisions would eventually result in fatalities but those fatalities would not necessarily be reported in an updated news article. The numbers of these additional collisions are shown in the next table.
So, while the Gorski Consulting data has missed about 50% of the fatal pedestrian collisions occurring in Ontario, a substantial number (22 to 36 per year) of additional collisions have been documented which were life-threatening and some of these would likely have turned into fatal results.
A surprisingly large number of pedestrian collisions reported in news media articles have involved hit-&-runs, as noted in the next table.
The 145 incidents of hit-&-run represents about 21.6% of the total 671 collisions that were documented. One might be tempted to believe that this is because a vehicle that strikes a pedestrian does not sustain significant damage and is therefore drivable. So drivers choose to escape.
Yet our experience is that there are a substantial number of drivers who do not detect that a collision has occurred, or they detect an impact but do not know what it was. There have been instances where drivers do not know what happened and it takes several seconds to comprehend that something has happened. Meanwhile the vehicle continues to travel down the road and this could be for several hundred metres. Upon exploration of the vehicle damage the driver comes to the realization that something has been struck and the driver returns to the area where the impact occurred. Meanwhile police conclude that the driver left the collision site on purpose and this becomes coded as a hit-&-run incident. The problem is that not all incidents of a vehicle leaving the site of a collision are the same and its takes some intelligence and experience with the evidence to make a correct assessment.
Correct interpretations of what happened in a pedestrian collision requires that the investigator obtains substantial experience in examining a large number of collisions. Regrettably, that is not always the case. Incorrect charges are laid and matters proceed to trial where a correct interpretation is not always guaranteed. When police, lawyers and judges do not have sufficient experience in these matters bad decisions are inevitable.
Some pedestrian collisions occur more frequently and it is important to recognize what factors have been at play. These issues will be discussed in the next segments of this article.
Trucks, Buses And Pedestrians
Serious pedestrian collisions often involve impacts by large vehicles such as trucks and buses. This can be seen in the news media articles. The incident of involvement by dump trucks can be seen in the following list of occurrences noted in the news media articles.
The next table shows pedestrian collisions involving transit buses.
And the final table shows pedestrian collisions involving school buses.
Although not noted in the news media articles a common theme amongst these collisions is that the driver of a large vehicle does not see the pedestrian due to the various blind spots existing around the vehicles. This is commonly observed when a large vehicle is making a turn. Often the mirrors that are installed to help a driver see objects around them are the sources of obstruction from seeing objects behind them. It is important that these mirrors be replaced by object sensors that exist on many modern light duty vehicles whereby pedestrians can be detected and automatic emergency braking (AEB) can be applied.
Other Pedestrian Impact Scenarios
While the causes of serious pedestrian collisions are various there are several that have repeated themselves in the news media articles.
On several occasions, often on high-speed expressways, a pedestrian has been struck after an initial impact where the driver exits their vehicle. In these instances persons do not recognize their danger. It has been commonly advised that occupants of a vehicle should stay in their vehicle after a minor impact however that is not always the best advice. A stopped vehicle within the lane of a high speed expressway can be struck. So it is advisable to discuss such complications. Pedestrians can exit their vehicle and travel to a location where they are less likely to be struck but this requires some understanding of the issues. Unfortunately no one in an official capacity has provided such important instruction to the public.
In some instances pedestrians have been struck while inside a bus shelter or simply standing on a sidewalk at an intersection. Again this requires some education about being vigilant when near motor vehicle traffic. The construction of bus shelters could be made more vigorous to reduce incidents of a vehicle plowing through the shelter however this is difficult to achieve especially when a wayward vehicle is of a higher mass.
In several instances pedestrians have been struck in urban parking lots. Visibility problems are a common factor. Due to their shorter height children are especially vulnerable and mothers pushing/pulling various carriages or wagons put their children at risk. Again, object proximity sensors in modern light-duty vehicles could be a great benefit as this modern technology becomes more prevalent.
Like cyclists, pedestrians can do much to increase their level of safety by wearing clothing that is reflective. Unfortunately there is a segment of cyclists and pedestrians who scoff at this idea while blaming motor vehicle drivers after they have been struck. More education is needed in this area.
Summary
There are opportunities to prevent many collisions but these are being wasted through inefficient bureaucracy. Attempts to change our societal thinking can sometimes be akin to using a row-boat paddle to turn around an ocean-liner. Many who are employed in some official capacity believe that the way it was always done is the way it should always be.
A primary problem resulting from this is that knowledge about how collisions occur, and why they occur, is a financial commodity, like pork bellies on a futures market. Those who are being killed and injured are often not in a financial position to gather the evidence needed to understand how they can avoid their tragedies. And those holding that critical information hold their cards close to their chests as if playing some kind of crazed poker game. Pedestrians are often at the bottom of the socio-economical scale and many must move through our transportation systems by walking, sometimes in very dangerous environments. While we may not be able to create pedestrian-safe systems at every location, much more can be done with expanding transparency through a public release of data held by many official organizations such as police, hospitals and governments. Until this transparency is dramatically increased we will continue to comment that Vision Zero is often Zero Vision.
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