On this day in 1941, Edmonton's medical health officer was in the newspaper expressing concern about traffic fatalities.
Dr. G.M. Little was worried about 11 traffic deaths in 1940, "the biggest total of the past 10 years." The number is indeed alarming, especially considering that Edmonton's population was about 92,000 at the time. We now have more than 10 times as many people living here, and we registered 14 traffic fatalities in 2019.
The goal is to get to zero, of course, and to that end, Vision Zero will soon roll out its Street Labs program, inviting community-led ideas this spring for making residential streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists.
It's interesting to note that Little urged both motorists and pedestrians to "use 'responsible behavior' in an earnest effort to cut down the annual death toll," showing that the often criticized tendency to assign equal responsibility to both parties goes back many decades.
This clipping was found on Vintage Edmonton, a look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist @revRecluse — follow @VintageEdmonton for daily ephemera via Twitter.