WATCH: 4 consecutive Hamilton drivers roll through a stop sign

Hamilton | Health | Latest News | Traffic |

By

Published July 21, 2022 at 2:43 pm

In much of the world, an octagonal red sign with the letters S-T-O-P signals that a motorist or cyclist must come to a complete stop, but apparently it is treated a little differently in Hamilton.

A Twitter user at the account @pedestrianbump shared a video on Wednesday that showed four drivers in a row, in under 25 seconds, roll through the stop sign and crosswalk at Young St. and Victoria Ave. South. The crosswalk is also used by people out for recreation who are headed to or from the nearby escarpment rail trail, which connects to Victoria by a staircase. The slope of hill, pillars that support the Claremont Access Overpass and trees likely inhibit drivers’ right-hand view of any northbound pedestrians or cyclists.

Young St., which is below the Claremont overpass, ends at Victoria. Victoria Ave. S. connects to Charlton Ave. E., which in turn provides access to the Sherman Access road to Hamilton Mountain.

In under 24 hours, the video had been viewed 9,000 times. It also inspired plenty of commentary in a year where they city had had 14 traffic deaths, including nine pedestrians and one cyclist.

“Enforcing this sort of thing (by issuing traffic tickets) would be a very efficient way to fund an investment in affordable housing,” wrote Graham Cubitt, who is a a director at Indwell, an affordable housing developer in the Hamilton area.

The elected leadership in Hamilton have recently passed several safety initiatives, including a plan to convert Main Street to two-way traffic. But David Shellnutt, a Hamilton lawyer who specializes in representing injured cyclists, wrote that the video demonstrates a larger issue with driver care.

“Cyclists, if the (Hamilton Police) ever start ticketing you in the face of the ongoing safe streets catastrophe, just pull this video up,” Shellnutt wrote. “Yes we need safe infrastructure, but without changing driver behaviour, we’ll never get where we need.”

insauga's Editorial Standards and Policies advertising