Mean Comments on a Pedestrian Injury

Earlier this month, Steph Power was on her way to get the bus to work. She was crossing Barter’s Hill to a cleared sidewalk on the other side when she slipped on black ice, fell and broke her ankle. These facts have been recorded in a CBC article by Andrew Sampson. What I want to talk about here is the comments people left on the article. Steph will probably be unable to work at her job as a baker for the next two months and has experienced a lot of pain. You’d think people would have some sympathy for her. You’d also think they might wonder why it wasn’t safe to walk on a Priority 1 street. But the conversation was almost entirely about how she was wearing “hipster footware,” how they personally made better footwear choices, how there’s “always plenty of salt on that street,”  “slippery roads are a fact of life” and “there’s no way the City can keep everything cleared in winter.”

It’s always interesting to compare the way vehicle drivers and pedestrians (and their rights) are discussed. If a driver was badly injured, would all the comments be about what kind of tires they had, why they didn’t look more carefully to see if there was black ice on the road, and “too bad, it’s winter, what did you expect”? If the City suggested that some streets couldn’t be cleared and salted for cars because “there’s no way the City can keep everything cleared in winter” would that argument be accepted?

One commenter did point out that “Barters Hill is a priority one street [and] this city is well known for poorly clearing and salting sidewalks” and a couple more expressed sympathy but the large majority of the thirty-three commenters seemed oblivious to the idea that pedestrians might have any rights or that walking safely (unlike driving) is anything but an individual responsibility. I went back later to post a supportive comment but comments were closed.

I decided to have a look at some CBC reports involving vehicle crashes in winter to compare comments on them to the ones on this article. To my surprise, none of the articles I looked at allowed comments. That leaves me wondering why this story did allow them, leaving an injured pedestrian open to the mean self-righteousness of anonymous readers. Does anybody have an answer?