While it might be sufficient in other cities, it’s a well-known fact that looking both ways before crossing the street in Toronto simply isn’t enough to guarantee one’s safety.
Pedestrians encounter traffic-packed roadways, narrow sidewalks and unpredictable motorists — and for kids, navigating the streets on foot can be especially intense.
For parents, the statistics for pedestrian collisions involving youth in the city can be alarming.
According to Toronto police, there were 1,693 reported motor vehicle collisions involving pedestrians in 2024, or 4.6 pedestrians struck each day — the most since 2019. Pedestrians 17 and younger were involved in roughly 10 per cent of those incidents.
Across the city, road safety advocates are pushing for reduced speed limits, more crossing guards and heavier penalties for dangerous driving.
In the meantime, parents are walking the streets with their kids and providing them with pointers in an effort to remain safe on sidewalks and crosswalks.
So, TorontoToday asked parents: How do you teach a child to safely cross the streets of Canada’s biggest city, and how do you know when they’re ready to venture on their own?
Avoiding danger can be ‘really challenging’ for kids
Brock Howes, a member of the Avenue Road Safety Coalition, has been among the advocates calling for additional safety provisions on the two-kilometre stretch of Avenue Road between Bloor Street West and St. Clair Avenue. The six-lane roadway has been the site of numerous collisions and fatalities in recent years.
Howes is also the parent to a young daughter who attends the nearby Brown Junior Public School. He walks her to and from school every day, avoiding Avenue Road whenever possible.
“There’s no doubt the sidewalks need to be wider and more accessible in that stretch,” he told TorontoToday. “The motor traffic speed is high as well, so we’ve been working with councillors to widen the sidewalks and reduce the speeds in this section.”
The city said it works with all stakeholders, including neighbourhood road safety coalitions, and “values their local input and insights.”
Howes joined his local road safety coalition nearly three years ago after being hit by a school bus while cycling on Avenue Road despite having the right of way.
Now, he wants to ensure no pedestrian or cyclist ever encounters a similar scare. Educating kids on how to properly cross a downtown street in their early years will help, he said.
“There’s so much traffic for kids to look for and it’s become so common for drivers to not look for a pedestrian,” he said. “I’ve had my daughter on my shoulders giving her a piggyback ride and had to jump off the street because a car was going to hit us.”
“If you can’t see her up there — wow. I mean, that’s got to be an eight-foot tall pedestrian.”
Before crossing a roadway in his neighbourhood, Howes will take several steps onto the street and look both ways while maintaining a close enough distance to the sidewalk in case a vehicle doesn’t stop. If a car comes to a full halt, he’ll proceed across the street. If not, he has enough distance and time to jump back to the sidewalk.
But his daughter, and most schoolchildren under 10, don't yet have that mental awareness, he said.
“You can’t expect a child to take those two steps forward, wait and see, and then back up. Cars will just roll the stop sign. It happens all the time,” he said.
“You have to aggressively put yourself in harm’s way before people react to you or see you. I’m not encouraging my daughter to do that but it makes it really challenging for her to get to where she’s going.”
Educating kids with assertion
Communicating road safety tips to children in Toronto can vary from household to household. In the Howes family, the messaging is pretty blunt: “I tell my daughter to assume every driver is stupid and trying to kill her.”
There are four elementary schools located in the Yonge-St. Clair neighbourhood, two of which are situated directly on Avenue Road, meaning child pedestrian traffic in the area is high.
Despite numerous crossing guards and considerable “slow down” signage in the vicinity of those schools, Howes said there have been far too many close calls.
“Just because you might have the right of way, you could still get hit,” he said. “You’re the vulnerable road user, so never assume. We want our daughter to be aware that even if she’s following every single rule, somebody could still hit her.”
Howes, like many parents in his neighbourhood, strongly encourages kids to avoid walking along high-traffic streets like Avenue and consider alternate routes and side streets whenever possible.
However, many major streets in the downtown core are unavoidable — like Bremner Boulevard, a key passageway for downtown students who attend Jean Lumb Public School and Bishop Macdonell Catholic School.
With the CN Tower, Rogers Centre and Metro Toronto Convention Centre nearby, traffic on Bremner is hyperactive. School crossing guards are deployed at several intersections along that stretch to ensure kids are travelling safely, and parents like Dana Shamlawi are incredibly appreciative of them.
“The Spadina and Bremner intersection is the biggest one we have to cross every day, but luckily, we have crossing guards who make things easier,” she told TorontoToday. “We always say: ‘Talk to the crossing guard and look out for them.’ They’ll be your guide in terms of when to cross and how to cross, so we’re thankful for that.”
Toronto police data shows that July was the most dangerous month in 2024 for younger pedestrians. Children accounted for 16 per cent of all pedestrian-related collisions that month — when crossing guards aren’t as active since students are on summer vacation.
According to the city, school crossing guards are deployed at 388 locations within the Toronto and East York Community Council Area boundaries. Eighteen of those locations have been added since the beginning of this year.
Toronto’s public and Catholic school boards told TorontoToday that staff regularly review street and traffic safety with students. The boards also provide road safety tips for parents so they can reinforce safety messages with children at home.
Some of those tips include wearing bright, reflective clothing during dark conditions, checking that cars in every lane can see you, making eye contact with drivers, ensuring all cars have stopped before crossing the road and avoiding use of headphones or cellphones when walking.
Shamlawi’s daughter, who will be turning nine next week, could be old enough to start walking to and from school without her parents by this time next year. But the cautious mother said her child won’t be commuting alone.
“It’ll be a buddy system,” she explained. “If she has someone that’s also walking to school with her, then it’s a conversation we can start to have. I think by age 12, she should be okay to do it alone since there are so many kids walking back and forth during the relevant times.”
“It’ll be easier for cars to see more than one kid,” she added.
Generational, cultural shifts to walking around Toronto
Having grown up in Alberta, Howes can remember a time when he was allowed to cross the street and take the bus by himself every day at his daughter’s age.
Fast-forward 30 years to a different, exponentially larger hub, and Howes now described that practice as being “completely unimaginable” in the Yonge-St. Clair neighbourhood.
“I’ll be walking her to school for a number of years still,” he said. “That never would have happened back in the day. Parents are usually walking with their kids [around here] until they’re between Grades 4 and 6.”
Having lived in Toronto since 2010, Howes claimed that an uptick in construction projects, paired with an alleged rise in selfish behaviour among drivers, have made the city considerably more dangerous for young pedestrians.
“Because of the way infrastructure is built here, it essentially requires aggressive behaviour,” he said. “Turning left in particular often blocks traffic going the other way, and that generally has made it more dangerous for road users. There’s also been an explosion in construction for some time now, which increases danger as there are frustrated drivers stuck in traffic.”
Apurav Johan, a local dad who walks his young daughter to and from school along Bremner Boulevard, has a different perspective on the issue.
He moved to Toronto from India several years ago, and having previously experienced the “chaos” that traffic boasts in the world’s most populated country, he said Toronto has actually provided his family with some reprieve.
“We’ve seen lots of bad drivers back there,” he said of India. “Looking at the situation in Toronto, I’d say it’s pretty good. Back in our hometown, we were told to be careful and not rely on other skill sets to drive, but your skill set to be cautious. That’s helping us a lot here.”
“People are always in a hurry, so we tell our daughter that if you’re an alert pedestrian, then that’s the best thing you can do.”
For Shamlawi, she agrees that motorists can be aggressive and inattentive from time to time, but when she’s walking with her daughter, a noticeable change in driving habits occurs.
“I find people in vehicles tend to be more cautious when they do see children,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s just an instinctual thing or what, but with my experience anyways, people in the school areas are more likely to slow down and be more patient than otherwise.”
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This story is part of a collaboration with The Green Line, a hyperlocal information and community services organization in Toronto. Register for The Green Line's community dinner and Story Circle event, "Toronto's Bike Lane Removals: Tips for Staying Safe" where you can hang out and brainstorm solutions with fellow community members.
