A city councillor wants new rules to prevent heavy trucks from driving near schools, following the death of two young students in the past seven months.
Fourteen-year-old Violet Liang was killed Tuesday morning when she was hit by a dump truck in front of C.W. Jefferys Collegiate in North York. In March, Kayleigh Callaghan-Belanger, age five, was run over by a city garbage truck as she walked home from her school in Scarborough.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday morning, Councillor Gary Crawford said that he was “absolutely shocked” by Liang’s death, which occurred as thousands of students headed back to class for the first day of the school year. The incident has convinced Crawford that large trucks should be barred from areas around school buildings during morning and afternoon hours when kids are walking to and from class.
“There are a number of different safety factors” including sidewalks and crossing guards, Crawford said. “But ultimately, do I think that garbage trucks or those kind of large trucks [should] be in school zones? No I don’t.”
In April, in response to Callghan-Belanger’s death, Crawford moved a motion at council asking waste management staff to conduct a review of its equipment, routing and training in order to prevent similar accidents.
Crawford said Tuesday he would talk to staff to make sure that a no-drive zone around schools is part of the review. The waste management department is hiring an outside consultant for the study, and expects it to be completed by spring or summer of 2014.
The councillor, who was a school trustee for eight years, says he understands that his proposal could be a logistical nightmare for truck drivers.
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing it, because safety trumps everything,” he said.
But Jim Harnum, general manager of solid waste services for the city, doubts whether Crawford’s solution is practical. He argues that there are so many schools in Toronto (almost 600 under the TDSB alone) that avoiding them during the morning and afternoon would effectively mean taking trucks off the road twice a day.
“We wouldn’t be able to get the garbage off the street,” he said.
According to Harnum, the city already does its best to avoid schools by scheduling routes to circumvent them during the morning and afternoon rushes.
“We’re not 100 per cent successful because it’s virtually impossible without having the trucks just not be on the road those two hours of the day,” he said.
City garbage truck drivers receive 40 hours of health and safety training every year, and are tested for driving skills on an annual basis, according to a city spokesperson. Drivers employed by private companies contracted to the city are trained according to provincial guidelines.
Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, chair of the public works committee, was unavailable for comment as he is visiting Vietnam to liaise with one of Toronto’s “friendship cities,” Ho Chi Minh City.
But another committee member, Councillor John Parker, fears that Crawford’s suggestion could cause more problems that it would solve because it could force drivers to speed in order to get out of prohibited areas in time. He doesn’t believe government regulation is the best way to prevent these kinds of tragedies.
“I would think that it would be good practice for anyone who drives a large vehicle to avoid areas where they can expect a lot of children,” said Parker, who steers clear of his local school on his way to work every day.
“Certainly in the aftermath of a tragedy like today, we all turn our minds to what can we possibly do to make the roads safer for our children. And there are no bad ideas, we’ve got to get them all on the table. But before we leap to any conclusions let’s just make sure we’ve thought things through fully.”
The truck that reportedly hit Liang on Tuesday wasn’t city-owned. It belonged to a private company named Rexdale Disposal, according to markings on its bed. A woman who answered the phone at the company would not answer NOW’s questions.
