If you’ve walked in a North American city, there’s a good chance you’ve witnessed and/or experienced something similar to that of Ratso and Joe in Midnight Cowboy – a driver makes a right hand turn without looking for pedestrians.

In Canada, there are an average of 300 pedestrian fatalities every year, and thousands of injuries (of course not all of these vehicle-pedestrian collisions are the sole fault of drivers, pedestrians too have responsibilities to observe traffic signals).

The pedestrian fatality rate in Canada is close to 8 per million people, compared to European countries like Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands, whose rate is under 3 per million. Clearly, Canada could be doing better than we are.

In Canada, almost 1/4 of pedestrian fatalities occur at intersections. There are changes that can be made to improve the situation for pedestrians at intersections, but they require a municipality to make pedestrian safety a priority. In Toronto and some other cities in Canada, the Leading Pedestrian Interval (LPI) aka Pedestrian Head Start Signal gives pedestrians a walk signal several seconds ahead of the vehicular green light, meaning pedestrians are able to get several steps into the intersection and be more visible before vehicles are legally allowed to move. I encountered an LPI in Regina at the intersection of Albert Street and Regina Avenue, and I hope there are plans for more.

Another way to improve things for pedestrians is to prohibit vehicles turning right on red lights. This means vehicles have to come to a full stop at red lights and can’t proceed until they have a green light, instead of the all-too-common practice of vehicles making right turns without slowing sufficiently and checking to see if there are pedestrians at the intersection. No right on red is the common practice in most of Europe but not in North America apart from a few places including the island of Montreal; more jurisdictions are looking at making this change. In Regina, there are some intersections, mostly around schools, that don’t permit right turns on red.

An advance green for pedestrians and/or a restriction on right turns on red won’t prevent the type of aggressive driver who almost hits Ratso in Midnight Cowboy, but they will still make crossing the street safer for pedestrians. Shouldn’t that always be a goal?