Toronto traffic fatalities have increased 44 per cent since 2024
Speed was a factor in many of the recorded incidents
In an unsettling update, Toronto police say traffic fatalities in the city have gone up, with pedestrian and motorcyclist deaths rising.
According to data reviewed by CBC, fatal collisions recorded in Toronto between January 1 and June 1 have increased by 28 per cent compared to the same period last year. Compared to the same period in 2024, there’s been a 44 per cent increase.
“A good portion of these fatals were caused by distracted or careless driving — people not paying attention and doing maneuvers that they should not be doing,” Sergeant Murray Campbell, of the force’s traffic services unit, told CBC this week.
Campbell noted that speed was a factor in many of the incidents, but said accidents have also occurred in parking lots and on private property.
“It’s exactly what advocates were warning about when our premier killed our speed camera program, that our streets would get a lot less safe for pedestrians, and that seems to be exactly what’s happening,” said Jess Spieker, a spokesperson for Friends and Families for Safe Streets, an advocacy organization. “It’s contributed to a very toxic driving and car culture that we have in Ontario and people are paying for it with their lives.”
When contacted by CBC, Dakota Brasier, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation, expressed condolences for those killed in fatal traffic accidents, but justified Premier Doug Ford’s removal of speed cameras last year. “Our government banned them to keep life affordable for taxpayers and drivers, while continuing to put road safety first,” she said.
Related: Speeding has increased by over 200 per cent on Parkside Drive since the speed camera ban
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
