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8 Comments

news

Crunch Hitness

By Marc Lostracco

26Feb07_streetcar_accident.jpg
Torontoist reader Pete submitted this image he took last night following the Interior Design Show at the CNE. We don’t yet know details on how it happened, but there were apparently no casualties.
With all the complaining about the concrete barriers on St. Clair and the tangle of vehicles on Spadina, this is a good reminder how cars and streetcars don’t always play well together. Streetcars obviously can’t stop on a dime, nor can they swerve away from something in their path. Many drivers think they can beat the TTC vehicle across the tracks but then either misjudge the speed of the streetcar or find too much oncoming traffic to continue. Factor-in slippery roads, cell phones and other general distractions and you have a recipe for danger.
TTC drivers are trained to help in incidents of emergency and all buses and streetcars are equipped with an emergency communication system. The TTC doesn’t publicly report on the frequency of vehicle collisions or accidents.
This photo is also featured in the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

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Comments

  • Ben

    TTC streetcars usually have front bumpers extending around the cab and down to near the ground. This one’s missing its bumper and looks like it put all of its energy into entering into the passenger cabin of a car at just the right height to miss the car’s side-impact safety devices. Maybe the TTC ought to reinforce its bumpers.

  • http://www.publicspace.ca Jonathan Goldsbie

    All right… I give up…
    What’s the reference in the headline?

  • Marc Lostracco

    Crunch Fitness is a chain in the U.S.
    Not my best headline in the world, but whaddya gwan do.

  • james

    this must have been horrible for the driver and everyone else involved and all that….
    ..but you can’t help but love the symbolism here. :) take THAT, automobile.

  • roads are for bikes too

    it seems that the first poster is more of a driver than a transit commuter
    if you where able to scan the original pic and see that the bumper was missing, you would notice as well the drag marks from the car being pushed… …the extend well beyond the right edge of the photo
    the sheathing that sits at the front of the street car is meant to detach upon impact

  • Ben

    You’re right, “roads are for bikes too”, if I were more of a transit commuter than a driver I’d be pleased by this life-threatening type of destruction. I would probably even lobby the TTC to install steel spikes to ram and hopefully kill drivers who get in the way of speedy streetcar service. That ought to discourage people from driving cars.
    WTF, dude? Safety’s for everyone.

  • Ed Drass

    2nd try posting:
    That’s Fleet St. at Coronation Park, no? This stretch of road, which is a corridor for the 509 Harbourfront and 511 Bathurst cars, was due to get an exclusive transit right-of-way (ROW) in 2006.
    An apparent lack of coordination between TTC and the City meant that the work is to take place this year. It will presumably be designed like the new St. Clair ROW now open between Yonge St. and Vaughan Rd.
    Has anyone heard of any collisions along that route?

  • Wrenkin

    I think the sheathing on the front of the streetcar is more about deflecting pedestrians and bikers than cars