Before motorcars dominated roads, vehicles powered by horses, thigh muscles, and electricity, made some road users anxious. It was the speed of cars, however, that changed the geography, severity, and scale of danger and harm.

The connection between speed and danger didn’t require scientific verification. “Autos go much too quickly Good for the tombstone men,” a newspaper headline confirmed in 1908. Ironically, it was more recent studies that re-energized community demands for lower speeds by quantifying the risk. At 30 km/h a pedestrian hit by a car will almost certainly survive but at 50km/h the chances of survival drop below 50 per cent.

A comprehensive Toronto road bylaw, adopted in 1890, prohibited drivers of horse-drawn vehicles from travelling at a gallop or other “immoderate rate.” When bicycles proliferated on city streets during the Bicycle Craze of the mid-1890s, a more specific limit — ranging from 6 to 10 mph (10 to 16 km/h) — became the subject of heated debate, resolved by expanding the prohibition on immoderate speed to cyclists.

Public hostility toward the early motorists, both because of the new danger and the sometime haughty attitudes of car owners, quickly spurred calls for speed restrictions. In 1903, Queen’s Park set the urban limit at 10 mph (then increased it again, and again, in ensuing decades).

At the time, electric streetcars still exacted a higher casualty toll. By the late 1920s, however, motorists in Toronto were killing, in a matter of months, as many people as streetcars, bicycles, and horse-drawn vehicles, combined, over a number of years.

The poor quality of roads initially served as a check on motor speeds but once the business of road building became the business of government, the lethal speed of cars, enhanced by growing power, was unleashed. In the 1950s, building and widening roads became a manic government enterprise, inducing more driving, greater speed, and more victims.

Priorities, and values, have again changed: the notion that death is an acceptable companion of modern transportation is largely rejected. In 2012, when Toronto’s medical officer of health and Ontario’s chief coroner recommended lowering limits to 30 km/h on residential roads and 40 km/h on arterials, the city’s motoring champions laughed. But it quickly became evident that lower speeds had strong popular appeal.

Toronto’s Vision Zero Road Safety Plan, adopted in 2016, prioritizes speed reductions. Speed cameras confirm that speeding is endemic. In April and May alone, the cameras “caught” 55,000 speeding motorists (near schools). But enforcement alone is clearly insufficient. Reductions in actual speed on roads built for speed requires redesign for human safety, a goal that is achievable with a serious investment of dollars and political will.

True, the city is generally headed in the right direction on road safety, but the pace of action is still dictated by a slavish devotion to outdated motoring priorities. The upcoming municipal vote presents an opportunity to elect candidates who believe that safety can’t wait.