Jenna Morrison has been dead for four months. Ulrich Hartmann was killed six years ago. Both were crushed beneath the wheels of a truck as they rode their bikes on a Toronto road.
With each day that passes, coverage of those two fatal accidents falls further from the front page, but their loved ones are dedicating themselves to making sure that their tragedies are not only never forgotten, but also never repeated.
Wednesday night at Beit Zatoun centre in the Annex, NDP MP Olivia Chow joined roughly 40 friends and relatives of Hartmann and Morrison gathered to swap ideas on how to push forward with the Safe Trucks initiative. The campaign was founded after Morrison’s death and has been championed by Chow in the House of Commons. She’s urging the federal government to enact truck safety regulations that many believe could have saved dozens of cyclists’ lives.
Chief among those measures are side guards, simple safety features that block the space between trucks’ front and rear wheels and prevent riders and pedestrians from being pulled under.
Karen MacNeil Hartmann believes that if the cement truck that struck her husband Ulrich in 2006 had been fitted with the guards, he would still be alive. Instead he was killed as he rode along Eglinton Ave. East, and the toll his death took on her family is still evident.
As MacNeil Hartmann sat at the front of the room and told the story of the day she got the call that her husband had been in a serious accident, her 10-year- old son Adam, seated beside her, began to cry. To her right, her teenage daughter Samantha stared straight ahead.
“After Ulrich was killed I promised Samantha and Adam that I would see that side guards were made mandatory on all large trucks,” MacNeil Hartmann said. “We honour Ulrich’s memory by preventing further deaths.”
She said that she’s suffered severe depression and developed a fear of hospitals in the wake of her husband’s horrific accident. Both her and her children have undergone therapy.
The family’s loss is made more poignant by the fact that it might have been prevented if authorities had heeded expert advice years before. A 1998 Toronto coroner’s report recommended putting side guards on trucks, but no action was taken.
“If that recommendation had been implemented, Ulrich would still be here,” MacNeil Hartmann said.
Side guards have been mandatory in Europe since 1989, and between 1995 and 2005, all 14 member states saw a combined 31 per cent drop in cyclist and pedestrian deaths. Accidents like the ones that killed Morrison and Hartmann have declined 61 per cent.
Despite their success in Europe, Canadian authorities have been reluctant to implement side guards here.
NDP MP Olivia Chow is frustrated by this inaction. She was they keynote speaker at the event on Wednesday and has taken the issue to the House of Commons twice already with no result. Her third attempt, a side guard bill she tabled last fall, is currently winding its way through the legislative process. But she says the bill is symbolic and all it would take to put side guards on all Canadian trucks would be an edict from transportation minister Denis Lebel.
Chow believes that after years of lobbying, she’s finally seeing some movement on the issue.
“In the past when I raised it there was no discussion at all in the House of Commons,” she said. “Lately, when I’m raising it, the minister is saying ‘If it really saves lives, I’m willing to look at it.'”
There are several obstacles to new safety regulations at the federal level however, most importantly the cross-border trucking industry. Ottawa would be wary of any regulations that would make it more costly for American trucks to do business here.
As the Safe Trucks initiative presses Ottawa for action, there are also efforts going on at City Hall to put side guards on Toronto roads. In December, city council asked the transportation manger to prepare a report on the feasibility of installing the safety features on the city’s fleet of vehicles. The report will go before the public works committee, but there is no timeline for its completion.
