City to conduct review on intersection where toddler was killed in marked crosswalk

The City of Edmonton is in the process of conducting a fatality review on an intersection where a toddler was killed last week.

The three-year-old boy was crossing Allard Road SW in a marked crosswalk with his mother and sister around 5 p.m. on Thursday when they were hit by a Ford F150 turning west.

The boy died at the scene.

The woman and the girl were taken to hospital and later released.

Speed and alcohol are not believed to be factors in the crash.

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Rupesh Patel of the city's safe mobility department calls the crash heartbreaking.

"This has been hard for the folks on our safe mobility team, when we hear about an incident involving a three-year-old boy. Some of us have kids and so it hits us really hard. Every fatality is important," he told CTV News Edmonton on Tuesday.

Patel says the review will start with a five-year collision history of the intersection.

"That gives us a sense of what kind of collisions have taken place in the past, who was involved in those collisions, whether (there are) any patterns that we would have seen, the time of day that these collisions would have been happening.

The Edmonton Police Service investigates a fatal crash in the Allard neighbourhood on June 27, 2024. (Brandon Lynch/CTV News Edmonton)

"We would also be looking at other kinds of relevant data such as the traffic speeds, the volume counts, anything that we have available."

The review will help the city determine if a traffic light is needed at the intersection.

Patel says the majority of crashes are caused by driver error and that the city undertakes such reviews to help minimize damage that they can cause.

"We know that human errors happen, so we want to be able to give layers of systems safety in the city," he said.

"But a key component of that is, as Edmontonians, to make sure that we're all taking care of each other. We all have a road role to play. We all need to be stopping at that stop sign and waiting for pedestrians."

The Edmonton Police Service investigates a fatal crash in the Allard neighbourhood on June 27, 2024. (Brandon Lynch/CTV News Edmonton)

Thursday's crash marks the 15th death on city streets in 2024.

"It is very, very concerning the high number of traffic fatalities that we have witnessed and 2024 is unfortunately much higher than what we have seen over the last number of years," Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said Tuesday.

"Recent incidents are demonstrating that more work needs to be done to improve traffic safety — whether it's through engineering or design, whether it's enforcement or traffic lights — I think that's something that our investigation continues to evaluate."

Ward Nakota Isga Coun. Andrew Knack said that the city is now taking a more proactive approach to traffic safety than in previous years.

"Every time we're doing neighbourhood renewal, we are building in traffic calming measures into that work," he said.

"When we're doing new neighbourhood approval, you're seeing far more built-in traffic calming measures, curb extensions, raised crosswalks, but for a lot of neighborhoods up until a few years ago, that was never an expectation.

"So no, I don't think we were doing enough for a long, long period of time. It's part of why we brought in these changes."

Knack said the city will also be doing Vision Zero Street Lab programs in 12 communities this year to engage the community and build a plan for safer streets.

"We just met with our city administration to figure out (if) we can do more than 12 a year, because there are 80 communities waiting right now for this type of work. We need to really ramp that up so that we're doing everything possible across the entire city to help with traffic safety."

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Nav Sangha