Montreal, August 22, 2023 - Vélo Québec welcomes the Road Safety Action Plan unveiled today by the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility (MTMD), Geneviève Guilbault. With this plan, the MTMD seems intent on providing real leadership on the issue of road safety, while mobilizing the partners essential to improving road safety. By announcing the creation of a Table d'actions concertées en sécurité routière, the MTMD is responding to a request from Vélo Québec and ensuring that all relevant players are mobilized to enable us collectively to reach a new milestone in road safety.
Structuring actions through developments
The plan presented today highlights the importance of taking action on road layouts to make travel safer for the most vulnerable users, namely pedestrians, senior pedestrians, children and cyclists. Vélo Québec therefore welcomes actions to revise MTMD standards for signage and road design to take account of active travel needs, and to provide municipalities with a Guide de conception des aménagements.
The improvement of financial support programs for municipalities, such as the TAPU, also corresponds to requests made by Vélo Québec, and will enable us to implement actions to make school approaches and, more broadly, living environments safer. The hundreds of school travel plans produced since 2005 by Vélo Québec and its partners as part of the On foot, by bike, an active city are full of recommendations aimed at improving safety for families on foot and on bicycles, and these funds will be used to implement them.
Vélo Québec also welcomes the stated desire to work more closely with municipalities, especially those whose main street is under the responsibility of the MTMD. However, this willingness will have to be translated into real consideration of the needs of active transport users, and cost-sharing commensurate with the needs of pedestrians and cyclists.
Infringements and framing: a welcome upgrade
By announcing a review of fines and demerit points for offences against vulnerable road users, MTMD is sending a clear signal and making more tangible the principle of prudence enshrined since 2018 in the Highway Safety Code, whereby the most dangerous road users are required to exercise greater caution towards vulnerable road users.
The announced increase in the number of photo radars is also worthy of note, as it will improve speed enforcement, particularly in school zones.
Vehicle size, an overlooked risk
To complete this ambitious action plan, Vélo Québec would have liked to see the issue of increasing vehicle size addressed. Well-documented as a major contributory factor in the severity of injuries in collisions involving vehicles, the trend towards increasing numbers of SUVs and light trucks may go some way to explaining the deteriorating road toll. As a minimum, this aspect should form part of the communication efforts planned to accompany the action plan, in order to raise public awareness of the impacts of their vehicle choices. Better still, a modulation of fees (registration, parking) should be considered to encourage Quebecers to make safer choices, not only for the occupants of their own vehicles, but also for the other road users they encounter.
