UNFORTUNATELY, not everyone who preaches highway safety does a good job practising it.

And nowhere is this more obvious than at the London office of Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation, which for some reason has responsibility for highways in most, if not all, of Dufferin County.

A classic example of the London MTO office’s indifference on the subject has been demonstrated repeatedly in the form of responses to calls by Mono Council for safety improvements at intersections on Highway 10.

Although the ministry finally agreed to provide a lane for left-turning traffic at the 10 Sideroad/Dufferin Road 10 intersection, that happened only after about 10 years of campaigning.

Now a similar situation has developed to the south, where the ministry reneged on a promise to call tenders for improvements at Cedar Grove Road, where the plan is to have a signalized intersection with left-turn lanes that will provide access to subdivisions east and west of the highway.

One of the subdivisions was developed in the early 1970s and the other, much larger one, is currently being built.

The stretch of Highway 10 between the intersections of First Street and Hockley Road has been the scene of many serious accidents, thanks in large part to the absence of turning lanes and presence of about 30 points of access, including several car dealerships, a motel, a service station and Monora Park.

Ironically, the improved safety provided by the signals and new access the intersection will give to the car dealerships and Monora Park as well as the subdivisions won’t cost MTO a penny, since all costs are to be borne by the developer, Aragon Properties.

However, one element of the cost is the drawing up of plans for the project, and herein lies the excuse for years of delay in providing improvements that will sharply reduce the risk of personal injury crashes. For reasons never explained publicly, MTO London has rejected at least four different designs, possibly because it wants most of the highway widened between First St. and Hockley Rd. – something the province should have done many years ago.

Further proof of the London office’s couldn’t-care-less attitude on the subject of safety is the absence of any warning for northbound traffic that a highway recently brought to a five-lane standard to the southern edge of Orangeville and which has fully controlled access through Orangeville (with signals and turning lanes at all intersections) suddenly has fully uncontrolled access and no turning lanes between First St. and Hockley Rd.

Worse still, traffic proceeding north of the Hockley intersection encounters a sudden deterioration of the highway at Camilla, where the road narrows to two lanes and has neither left turn lanes or warnings of their absence at the intersections with Mono’s 20, 25 and 30 Sideroads.

Interestingly, an entirely different standard has been followed for Highway 9 east of Orangeville, which happens to be within the MTO’s Central Region based at Downsview. There, all intersections have left turn lanes, the only problem being that only short stretches of the busy highway have more than two lanes.

Clearly, Ontario has no single standard for design of its provincial highways based on the volume of traffic being handled. And this is just one of many areas where safety could be improved at relatively low cost.

Here are a few other examples of what could and should be done to make those highways significantly safer:

1. Modernize and standardize speed limits. Speed laws based on the actual condition of the highways and the speeds currently being driven by most motorists would sharply reduce the incidence of potentially deadly passing on two-lane highways.

2. Provide fully paved shoulders on busy two-lane highways. Such shoulders, found in most other provinces, allowing slow-moving vehicles to pull over and let other traffic pass as well as permitting safe pullovers to avoid an oncoming vehicle in your lane.

3. Provide warnings in advance of signalized intersections. The flashing amber lights found in other provinces have eliminated untold numbers of crashes.

4. Base highway widenings on need, not political or other considerations. Today, for some reason, the province has four-laned most, if not all, Highway 11 between Barrie and North Bay, while the Highway 400/69 combination remains two lanes for most of the way between Parry Sound and Sudbury.

5. Provide a lot more safe passing lanes on busy two-lane highways. Highways as busy as Highway 10 north of Camilla and Highway 9 east of Orangeville ought to be four-laned, but as an interim measure they should at least have third lanes added roughly every 10 kilometres to permit safe passing of trucks.

Even if just some of these measures were adopted, our highways would be the scene of a lot fewer serious crashes.