Wrong!

Government sponsored advertising: clueless, finger-wagging. Here’s one more example.

There’s an artsy reflection of some construction junk covering up the important part of this photo but if you look closely, you’ll see that it’s a picture of a car getting totalled by a pedestrian. The caption says “if only,” the point being, “you silly pedestrian, do you think the cars are going to be hurt by you? No you silly goose (the person who thought of this definitely says things like “silly goose”), of course they won’t.”

I am a staunch anti-car-ist. You know those annoying people who are like “oh, I NEVER watch TV”? That’s me, but for cars. I made my accountant explain to me in detail why I couldn’t write off my sneakers as a transportation expense. But still, even I do not sit around at home wishing that people would drive into trees. That would be mean.

Adding insult to ineffectiveness, this particular bus shelter ad was at a busy corner that has a streetcar stop on either side BUT NO CROSSWALK. It’s right outside my house. This is where I do all my jaywalking. The city has left me with no choice. They have put my streetcar stop there, but they would prefer that I walk down the street to the light (and the next streetcar stop. It’s far enough away that you can take public transportation to get there), cross and come all the way back. (A trajectory not covered by a TTC transfer, by the way.) That, or, apparently, that Toronto magically transform into a distopic society where flimsy cars are crushed by the slightest collision with mega-dense, teflon-coated, titanium-core cyborgs aka, the new me (or mes, why not make us clones, too), City-of-Toronto-style.