Veteran lawyer calls for urgent legal and cultural reforms to protect most vulnerable road users
This article was produced in partnership with McLeish Orlando
For more than three decades, Patrick Brown has been on the front lines of road safety, handling countless pedestrian and cycling fatality cases and leading the province’s landmark Chief Coroner Cycling Death Review in 2012. Despite the tireless advocacy of himself and others, Brown says the grim reality hasn’t changed: far too many lives are lost on Ontario streets.
“It’s quite alarming, to tell you the truth,” Brown says. “By this time, through different mechanisms, I would have hoped we’d see a dramatic decrease. But unfortunately, that hasn’t come to pass.”
For Brown, the root of the problem lies in Ontario’s fragmented approach to road safety. Fundamental to protecting vulnerable road users is physical separation from cars, trucks, and other vehicles. For example, dedicated lanes and safe pedestrian routes.
“Infrastructure is key to safe passage,” Brown stresses. “But most urban centres take a piecemeal approach.”
A lobby group may fight for a bike lane in a particular area but there’s no full, connected system of lanes across the urban centre. It’s also often a reactive approach, with safety upgrades considered only after a tragedy in a specific location. The resulting patchwork of safety measures is a problem, leaving too many gaps and too many people at risk.
Brown’s frustration is compounded by the fact that solutions are not a mystery. In the comprehensive coroner’s review, the year-long study involved police, government, engineers, medical professionals, and advocacy groups and produced a list of proactive recommendations to make streets safer.
But the uptake on suggestions such as lowering speed limits, adding sidewalks, and installing more controlled crossings was far from what stakeholders hoped to see.
“Some have been implemented, but the vast majority have not — and that’s a problem,” Brown notes. “We know what has to be done, but it’s not being done.”
Brown adds that the failures of the current system are also a sign Ontario’s cities are falling behind. While many places around the world embrace more comprehensive and modern approaches to urban planning, Ontario’s progress remains slow and insufficient.
The consequences sit in black and white in the many files Brown handles in his role as principal partner at McLeish Orlando LLP. He sees trends in these cases, including drivers who lack understanding of basic driving laws. Even where infrastructure such as bike lanes exists, there’s a gap of education on how to maneuver through them safely.
Brown calls out a double standard, illustrated by a case where a young woman was struck by a truck and had her leg amputated.
“We were successful in proving the driver was negligent, but what’s missing is accountability,” he explains. “The driver never had their license taken away or had their ability to drive assessed. Meanwhile, my client had her license suspended until she could prove she could drive safely with her prosthetic.”
Brown also sees an increase in cases involving drivers distracted by digital devices — he recalls a particularly egregious case where a woman was walking her dog midday and a driver on their cell phone struck and killed her on the sidewalk — as well as an uptick in cases against construction companies.
When doing work in an urban centre, these companies are obligated to ensure that any redirection of traffic flow for vulnerable road users is done in a safe and reasonable manner. But “many times, they fail to do that,” Brown notes.
Brown also has ongoing cases against Toronto. He’s been successful in establishing improper and lack of road design and repair, which is the city’s responsibility under the Municipal Act.
“We do pursue that, where warranted and based on evidence elicited from urban design experts and engineers,” Brown says. “We’ve also had successful cases against truck companies, arguing there’s a failure to educate drivers in proper driving safety. There’s a wide spectrum of responsibility here.”
Despite the obstacles, Brown is undeterred in his push for reform. He’s taken his fight to Queen’s Park multiple times, backing private member’s bills that would introduce mandatory minimum sentences for drivers convicted of seriously injuring or killing vulnerable road users. He’s also advocated for a “textilizer” law, which would allow police to check whether a driver was using their phone at the time of a crash.
While these measures didn’t get far, he remains convinced that changes like these are essential. He’s also critical of laws that stack the deck against victims.
“Why are we giving bad, distracted, and drunk drivers a break by limiting victims’ ability to sue for full compensation?” he asks, pointing to the deductibles, thresholds, and limits on loss-of-income claims that frustrate plaintiff-side personal injury lawyers across their files.
“Those particular barriers to victims should be eliminated.”
He also calls the jury trial process fundamentally unfair given statistics show a large percentage of the population holds a bias against cyclists. In most cases where a cyclist been injured or killed, the defendant files a jury notice. The victim is then forced to face those potential biases with no real opportunity to investigate or challenge them.
Brown argues that if the plaintiff chooses to have trial by judge alone, “that should take place regardless of a defendant’s position.”
Brown highlights another barrier to justice: victims lack automatic and immediate access to crucial evidence collected by police. Instead, their cases are delayed by court orders and procedural hurdles, leaving victims “handcuffed by all these restrictions” and unable to move forward in a meaningful or timely way.
Ultimately, Brown argues, Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act itself needs a fundamental overhaul.
“Many of the laws are still very car-centric and fail to appreciate the vulnerable nature of cyclists and pedestrians,” he says. “The law must evolve to reflect the realities — and risks — of all road users.”
McLeish Orlando is deeply involved in grassroots efforts to promote road safety. From raising education and awareness through webinars and pro bono work representing organizations such as Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists, Cycle Toronto and the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation, to hands-on initiatives like Helmets on Kids which has provided thousands of free helmets to children, the McLeish Orlando team is dedicated to moving the needle on this issue.
The firm is also a major financial contributor to various organizations working to promote road safety and reduce injuries, and these efforts haven’t gone unnoticed: McLeish Orlando received the Bike Friendly Business Award from the City of Toronto.
Brown, an avid cyclist and founding member and former Board member of Cycle Toronto (formerly Toronto Cyclist Union) and Bike Law Canada, says it’s clear the real solution lies in a fundamental cultural shift. Meaningful progress means laws, infrastructure, and public attitudes working together to ensure everyone’s right to safe passage on Ontario’s streets.
"We need a change in the behaviour and attitudes of all people — drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, governments, politicians, police — that moves us away from car culture and towards a standpoint that respects all road users,” Brown sums up. “Everyone should be able to move around safely, without facing fear of death or severe injury. Families shouldn’t have to go through that. It’s all preventable.”
