A female cyclist has been killed after being hit by a flatbed truck near the Annex, police say.Police were called to the intersection of St. George St. and Bloor St. W. around 12 p.m. Tuesday by the report of a collision between a cyclist and a truck. When emergency services arrived, the woman was found without vital signs, and pronounced dead shortly after. Paramedics originally said they believed her to be in her 20s, but police later confirmed she was 58. At the scene, a bike with a small pink bell on the handlebars could be seen lying on the ground, the front wheel crumpled, with a helmet lying nearby. The woman is the 93rd pedestrian or cyclist to die on Toronto streets since June 13, 2016, the day Mayor John Tory announced the initiative that would become Vision Zero — a plan to reduce traffic deaths to zero by 2021.Since that announcement, the rate of pedestrian and cyclist deaths has not fallen. Including Tuesday’s fatal collision and the announcement by police that a 36-year-old male cyclist who was hit last month has died in hospital, 21 pedestrians or cyclists have been killed in Toronto so far this year, according to data compiled by Toronto Police and the Star. That pace exceeds the number killed by this date in 2017 and 2016. In the last ten years, only 2015 saw more pedestrians and cyclists killed by this date, at 23.At the public works and infrastructure committee on Tuesday, Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti said: “I do not believe bicycles should be on roads at all.”The committee was debating adding bike lanes and cycle tracks in the northwest part of the city, including in the area near York University — what Mammoliti called a “downtown approach to the suburbs.”Speaking to reporters later, Mayor John Tory called that kind of thinking “outdated”.“We are actually encouraging more people to use cycling to get around because we want to preserve the environment, we want to have a health, less ...
|
