The pedestrian countdown law in Toronto

Toronto Mayor John Tory and the police had been reminding pedestrians about the law not to cross the road when the countdown begins, as part of an education aimed to clear congestion.

However, New York City had a more relaxed attitude towards the law and had given more right of way to pedestrians.

In New York city pedestrians were allowed to start crossing during the countdown, until the ‘don’t walk’ signal appeared which endangered many lives.

“Nearly every day, someone is injured or killed crossing our streets and it is past time we update our laws to adequately protect pedestrians,” said New York’s Public Advocate, Letitia James, after city council unanimously approved the change.

“This common sense legislation will ensure that countdown clocks accurately portray the time pedestrians have to cross our streets,” James added.

Ydanis Rodriguez, New York councillor, a supporter of New York’s Vision Zero initiative was in favour of the change and said that many of the collisions of the drivers with the pedestrians trying to cross during countdown could be avoided and streets could be safer.

“We've seen rampant abuse of the right of way, with cars whipping around corners without worrying once about pedestrians,” he said.

Ben Fried, editor of the active transportation website Streetsblog said many New Yorkers were surprised this wasn’t already the law.

“It really wasn’t about influencing pedestrian behaviour, it was more about shaping the law to reflect how people are already walking,” he said.

Dylan Reid of the pedestrian advocacy group Walk Toronto said same changes in Toronto would stop people from crossing on countdowns.

The Ministry of Transportation had said it had no plans to revise the Highway Traffic Act, but Reid said the city should push provincial officials to reconsider.

“At the moment basically our laws don’t really match the assumption and the infrastructure,” he said.

(Reporting by Asha Bajaj)