Road safety top of mind around the Zorra Township horseshoe

Coun. Crystal Finch of Zorra Township tells her colleagues why road safety is so important to her at its meeting on Feb. 19, sharing some of the personal loss she has had. (Contributed Photo)

Connor Luczka, Echo Correspondent

For Zorra Township Coun. Crystal Finch, road safety is a personal issue. At the Feb. 19 council meeting, she shared that a very close friend passed away in a vehicle collision at Punkeydoodles Corners in 2022.

Just last year, she suffered another harrowing loss.

“On Sept. 1, 2024, my niece, my daughter and her friend had just finished work and were en route to meet us at the Paris fair,” Finch shared. “They never made it to the fair. We wound up at the hospital with only my daughter and her friend making it (there). My 17-year-old niece passed away. She was to start Grade 12 in just a few days, get back to her rugby practice and teammates she loved so much.”

Funch added her nice was going to decide what college she wanted to attend.

“point to telling you this is we have all seen or have been affected by collisions, speeding, distracted driving and fatalities on our roads. We sit in these seats and sometimes wonder how we can make change happen. This motion is the beginning to make these real, lasting changes happen.”

The motion in question came from Finch and Coun. Katie Grigg. It calls upon upper levels of government to “do everything in their power to limit speeding, distracted driving, and impaired driving,” and that the province implements the Good Roads rural road safety program.

On the Goods Roads’ website, under the rural roads safety initiative, the organization states that “simply put, rural roads are more dangerous than other roads. In 2019 there were 428 traffic fatalities on municipal roads, of which 205 occurred in rural municipalities. The unfortunate reality is that with only 13.3 per cent of the provincial population, rural Ontario accounted for 48 per cent of traffic fatalities on municipal roads.”

It lists replacing legacy assets, installing absent road fixtures, and upgrading to more modern assets with innovative safety functions as possible actions through a partnership with the provincial government.

However, as Grigg explained, the motion goes beyond just those actions.

“This motion came from a series of conversations that happened with colleagues from across the county,” Grigg explained. “And I'll borrow from Mayor Ryan, who, in these conversations will say you know, if I don't buckle my seat belt, my car starts beeping at me. But I have a vehicle that I can drive 200 kilometres an hour, where we don't have any speed limits that permit that. That's where we need to look to other levels of government to really step in and help address this issue.”

Coun. Paul Mitchell thanked Finch for her personal comments, adding the three components to safe roads - design, enforcement, and behaviour - are all tied together yet are all separated when it comes to what level of government oversees them. Ryan agreed with Mitchell, pointing out that even the component that the municipality does oversee, design and engineering, is not the complete picture. A municipality only oversees road design and not vehicle design, which, as he argued, would be the most effective way to tackle road safety.

“And it's a good time for us to step up as well, given the fact that there's some large growth coming to our own municipality in the upcoming years,” Coun. Kevin Stewart added.

Before the motion was passed unanimously, Ryan added that the township has worked with other municipalities in the region. He believes the sentiment will get broad support at the county level and the region will have the proper collaboration to advocate effectively to the provincial and federal governments.