In early July, a pickup truck swerved and hit five pedestrians after its intoxicated driver lost control of the vehicle in St. Thomas, Ont. A child died and a woman was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Also last month, a silver SUV collided with a 22-year-old woman in Brockville, Ont. She was rushed to the hospital with serious injuries.
Then another pickup struck a man in his 50s riding a bicycle in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. He died from his injuries.
Such tragedies are common on Canadian streets, driven in part by the soaring popularity of SUVs and pickup trucks over the past decade. Critics had hoped the gas-guzzling vehicles would fall out of favour amid rising fuel costs and climate change concerns. But now automakers are pivoting en masse to electric versions of these popular vehicles — which are heavier, quieter and potentially even more lethal to cyclists and pedestrians.
As larger vehicles like SUVs and pickup trucks become more prevalent, Daniella Levy-Pinto of the advocacy group Walk Toronto is one of many activists sounding the alarm over the dangers of the vehicles to pedestrians and cyclists. Levy-Pinto, who is blind, says she’s “had close calls with inattentive drivers. I start crossing and my (guide) dog has pulled me back.
“I’m terrified that this could happen with an SUV.”
Last summer, Walk Toronto was one of 16 groups that sent a letter to Ontario’s chief coroner, Dirk Huyer, demanding an investigation into the effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and cycling deaths.
‘If you take a lower vehicle with a slanted roof striking a pedestrian at 50 km/h, it’s a different outcome than a much higher vehicle with a flat front striking a pedestrian.’
— Clarence Woudsma, associate professor of planning, University of Waterloo
Multiple studies show that the toll of heavy-duty vehicles dwarfs the impact of smaller ones. A 2020 Ontario Ministry of Transportation report stated that pedestrians are 3.4 times more likely to die when struck by an SUV, pickup truck or minivan as opposed to a smaller car. Such vehicles killed 58 pedestrians in Ontario in 2016, compared with the 37 killed by passenger cars – despite the fact that there were more than twice as many passenger cars on the road that year, the study showed.
Larger vehicles, collectively called ‘light trucks,’ now make up the majority of sales in Canada. In 2022, ‘trucks’ — the category including light trucks, as well as buses and heavy trucks — made up 83 per cent of new vehicle sales in Canada, up from 55 per cent in 2010, according to Statistics Canada.
This trend spells trouble for pedestrians and cyclists, research shows. In the United States, traffic fatalities are at their highest level in two decades, with much of that rise attributable to pedestrian fatalities, according to a 2018 study in the U.S. Journal of Safety Research.
Pedestrian fatalities rose by 46 per cent from 2009 to 2016, the report showed. It also found that SUV and pickup truck collisions kill a disproportionate number of pedestrians. While the pickup crashes surveyed represented under six per cent of collisions, they accounted for nearly 13 per cent of fatalities. And while SUV crashes made up under 15 per cent of studied collisions, they caused over 25 per cent of the fatalities. A 2022 study in the same journal found children to be eight times more likely to die when hit by an SUV.
With the shift to electric vehicles well underway, major automakers remain focused on SUVs and pickup trucks, marketing them as both spacious and emissions-free.
Canadian politicians are working to put the country at the centre of the EV revolution, touting Canada’s reserves of minerals critical for batteries, its existing automaking facilities and highly trained workforce. And automakers are responding. General Motors opened Canada’s first all-electric vehicle plant in Ingersoll, Ont., in December. In March, Volkswagen announced its first North American EV battery plant would be built in St. Thomas, with the help of billions of dollars in federal subsidies. The massive facility could be the largest such plant in the world, the automaker said.
SUVs are expected to play a central role in Canadian EV manufacturing. In Oakville, a Ford plant planned for 2024 will likely build nothing but SUVs.
But safety advocates are warning that electric SUVs and pickups would mean a further blow to pedestrian and cyclist safety. Massive batteries make electric vehicles heavier — and deadlier — than their gas-powered counterparts. The Ford F-150 Lightning EV pickup, for example, is between 900 and 1,350 kilograms heavier than its combustion-engine equivalent.
The design of large vehicles makes them inherently more dangerous, says Albert Koehl, founder of the Toronto Community Bikeways Coalition. He points to their weight, their limited field of vision and their high front ends, which are “more likely to strike people in vital organs” than smaller vehicles.
Clarence Woudsma, an associate professor of planning at the University of Waterloo, echoes those concerns: “If you take a lower vehicle with a slanted roof striking a pedestrian at 50 km/h, it’s a different outcome than a much higher vehicle with a flat front striking a pedestrian.”
But safety standards, Woudsma says, focus more on drivers’ safety than pedestrians. “When they do crash testing with vehicles, it’s all about the safety of the occupants,” he says. “I don’t think it considers pedestrian safety, frankly.”
‘You want to be in the bigger vehicle because when you’re in a crash you want to fare better than the other guy. But of course, caught in the middle of all this are pedestrians and cyclists who don’t have any protection at all.’
— Albert Koehl, founder, Toronto Community Bikeways Coalition.
Koehl describes an “arms race” in which drivers are buying increasingly large vehicles to keep up with the behemoths already on the road. “You want to be in the bigger vehicle because when you’re in a crash you want to fare better than the other guy. But of course, caught in the middle of all this are pedestrians and cyclists who don’t have any protection at all.”
Koehl’s group also signed the letter addressed to the chief coroner. In a January meeting, he says Huyer declined to investigate the issue, on the basis that the dangers of large vehicles are already well known. Still, Koehl says the coroner’s office has indicated it will work with the Toronto Community Bikeways Coalition and others to develop and endorse recommendations responding to the issue.
It’s time for government to step in to curb the dangerous impact of SUVs and pickups, he says. “All levels of government have a role and all levels of government have abdicated their role to the interest of big automakers.”
Koehl is urging governments to require a special class of licence to drive a larger vehicle. He’s also suggesting a higher registration fee to dissuade consumers from buying the vehicles he calls “unsuited to city roads.”
Michael Stewart, community relations consultant for the South Central Ontario chapter of the Canadian Automobile Association, which represents 2.4 million drivers, says he disagrees with Koehl’s proposition for a large-vehicle licence, arguing that “the driver’s licence process in Ontario is pretty strenuous as it is.”
“The rules of the road are the same for everyone no matter what type of car you’re driving,” he says. “We like to focus more on driver behaviour.”
Murielle Pierre, manager of public affairs for CAA National, says the CAA doesn’t encourage its members to buy certain vehicles over others. “With CAA we try not to be the finger-wagging organization,” she says. Instead, messaging aims to “educate Canadians on the importance of sharing the road.”
But critics say many consumers make poor – even irrational – choices about the vehicles they buy. Koehl gives the example of the Ford F-Series pickup truck, which has been Canada’s highest selling vehicle for over a decade. These massive vehicles are designed to “pull giant loads they’ll never pull in reality,” Koehl says.
Jason Slaughter, a Canadian now living in the Netherlands who often critiques car-centric North American cities on his YouTube channel “Not Just Bikes,” agrees.
Most people buying the larger vehicles don’t actually need them, Slaughter says. “Are you really proposing that all of these pickup trucks with these pristine, shiny tailgates and nothing in them are really just incredibly careful construction workers who just happen to be between loads?”
In March, Slaughter released a video called, “These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us” on his channel, garnering over three million views.
Tom Flood, who formerly worked in advertising for automakers, says the auto industry started promoting SUVs and pickup trucks to urbanites to expand the market for these vehicles, which had originally consisted largely of people in the trades and agriculture.
Flood, who was on hand for the Canadian relaunch of the Toyota Tundra pickup truck in 2007, said marketing campaigns for pickups at the time aimed to “convey size and power,” emphasizing the practical appeal of the vehicle for farmers and tradespeople.
Today, pickups are marketed to a wider base, including city dwellers, he says. A 2022 ad called “Cappuccino” shows a well-dressed man driving the Toyota Tundra Capstone through city streets to meet friends on a patio dwarfed by the oversized vehicle. “They’ve offered these extremely premium versions of these trucks to appeal to a different demographic” and increase market share, he says.
Though often marketed as the ultimate off-road vehicle, pickup trucks are now a frequent sight on urban roads. Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, an Ottawa cyclist, says she’s used to being passed by “pickup trucks that are suspiciously shiny.”
A board member for the advocacy group Bike Ottawa, Bonsma-Fisher says she finds it intimidating to be “on a bike staring down the grill of a huge pickup truck.”
Flood says a treacherous bike ride with his kids to school forced a realization that Canadian streets weren’t safe. “Once your eyes are open, it’s hard to unsee what we’ve done.” Flood now works with advocacy groups and offers workshops at universities to “highlight this absurdity that we’ve normalized on our streets.”
The federal government offers consumers up to $5,000 toward the purchase of an electric vehicle. The program includes passenger cars priced under $55,000 and larger vehicles priced under $60,000.
‘I have an electric bike that is my family vehicle that I carry my groceries and child on. That doesn’t qualify for an electric vehicle rebate, even though for me, it replaces the need for a car.’
— Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, cyclist, board member of Bike Ottawa
However, the program does not extend to more pedestrian-friendly options such as electric bikes, Bonsma-Fisher points out: “I have an electric bike that is my family vehicle that I carry my groceries and child on,” she says. “That doesn’t qualify for an electric vehicle rebate, even though for me, it replaces the need for a car.”
Asked why the program excludes electric bicycles, federal Ministry of Transportation spokesperson Hicham Ayoun said in an email that “federal incentives for zero-emissions transportation are currently focused on light-duty vehicles” due to their expense. Given the large proportion of SUVs and pickup trucks sold in Canada, “decarbonizing these vehicles by replacing them with equivalent zero-emissions vehicles will be essential to meeting both the Government of Canada’s zero-emissions vehicles and climate-related ambitions,” he said.
Koehl says he finds governments’ focus on electric vehicles problematic. “I think it’s a bit of a diversion to talk about electrifying these vehicles when they’re unsuitable for our cities to begin with.”
Electric light trucks also discourage people from embracing active transportation — one of the key ways of combatting climate change, observers say.
“The problems with cars are not just emissions,” Bonsma-Fisher says. Electric vehicles, made heavier by their batteries and quieter by their lack of a combustion engine, will make walking and cycling more dangerous, she says.
‘Federal incentives for zero-emissions transportation are currently focused on light-duty vehicles . . . Decarbonizing these vehicles by replacing them with equivalent zero-emissions vehicles will be essential to meeting both the Government of Canada’s zero-emissions vehicles and climate-related ambitions.’
— Hicham Ayoun, spokesperson, federal Ministry of Transportation
Levy-Pinto says the widespread adoption of larger vehicles is already deterring people from walking and cycling. “People will keep moving away from active transportation, even though this is what we need to face the climate emergency.”
She says that subsidizing the very vehicles scaring pedestrians and cyclists off the roads is the wrong approach. “Electric vehicles are going to save the car industry, not the world.”
But the CAA’s Stewart says the rise of large vehicles is simply a result of consumer preference. “People are choosing SUVs because at the end of the day, people like them,” he says. “SUVs offer space in their vehicle as well as a lot of different features.”
Stewart also points to new safety features such as blind spot detection as encouraging, and emphasizes the importance of safe driving. “We all have a responsibility to be a safe driver.”
Slaughter scoffs at this argument: “That’s the typical car industry answer: more stuff they can sell you.” Manufacturers tend to focus on new safety features instead of changing vehicle design, he says.
Canadian discourse around crashes tends to blame the pedestrian, not the automakers, he adds. “There’s a lot of victim-blaming that goes on.”
Levy-Pinto says she often hears people saying that to avoid collisions, pedestrians should make eye contact with drivers. Being blind, that’s simply not an option for her. “When pedestrians are instructed to be attentive, that’s discriminatory against those of us who can’t,” she says.
The people driving the vehicles should be the ones responsible for avoiding a crash, she argues.
She says that the increased adoption of SUVs and pickups now means that “no one is safe anymore.”
“It is important for people making purchasing decisions to know what they are buying,” she says. “Why do we need these monstrosities?”
