If you get where you’re going on foot with any regularity, you likely already keep a sharp eye out for drivers who might not be doing the same for you, but you probably didn’t notice things get three times worse out there in the past week.  

According to a Carnegie Mellon University study of accident data the risk of pedestrians being struck and killed by vehicles triples in November after the clocks go back for daylight savings time.

These findings line up with others that have singled out November as a particularly bad one for vehicle-pedestrian collisions. The real witching hour, according to the Carnegie Mellon researchers, is 6 p.m., when rush hour commuters, daylit the week before, must adjust to making their way in the dark. 

Last Sunday, the day the clocks rolled back, a three-vehicle accident at Bronson and Slater sent two
pedestrians to hospital with critical injuries. Another walker got hit on Blair Road at Innes Friday. It would be simplistic to blame the time change alone. Single cause accidents are rare. Usually it’s an unlucky combination of causes.

Ontario’s chief coroner wants to take a look at some of those causes, and last week announced a probe into all 115 pedestrian traffic deaths in Ontario last year, eight of which occurred here in Ottawa. That was an average year, by the way.

The study will examine the circumstances of each, parsing the age and gender of the victims, intoxication or distraction, road conditions, visibility and other factors, with an eye to cutting down on these preventable deaths.

The city is also in the process of overhauling its traffic safety plan, the last one of which aimed to reduce total traffic fatalities in Ottawa to 22 a year by 2010.

Apart from our failure to hit that benchmark last year (38 people died on our streets and roads), one has to ask just who decided 22 dead pedestrians, cyclists and motorists was an acceptable tally. Had the quota been met, would a celebratory “mission accomplished” announcement have been in order?

Thankfully, the Safer Roads Ottawa Program acknowledges that one is too many, aims not at a target number, but “towards zero,” through better engineering of roads, bike lanes and intersections, and education and enforcement targeted at everyone who uses them.  

No matter how improbable complete success might be, that’s a zero-means-zero pledge I can get behind.