LETTER: Surrey and Delta streets are ‘totally unsafe’ for pedestrians
Published 7:00 am Friday, March 6, 2026
Editor,
Re: Pedestrians killed in three separate crashes in Surrey (Surrey Now-Leader, Feb. 19)
Surrey and Delta streets are totally unsafe for pedestrians, by government design and practice (lack of enforcement). Only by finding government persistently liable (only if it costs them money) will things change.
I saw a car hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk full of pedestrians while the driver was making a left turn onto Scott Road; and was myself hit by a driver who was turning onto 92nd Avenue in Delta. He had stopped atop the crosswalk and then took off after I walked in front of him. My legs were sore for a week. A few seconds earlier, as I was about to enter the crosswalk at the previous intersection, a car blew the stop sign and turned onto 92nd Avenue at a speed that would have killed me, had I been oblivious (e.g. on my cellphone) as most pedestrians, by far, are.
Several times on Scott Road, cars have zipped by me quite fast while I was in a crosswalk, and I have often seen them fly by fellow pedestrians, very close; even though it is totally illegal to drive through a crosswalk if there is anyone anywhere along it.I have frequently seen cars in Surrey and Delta fly past stop signs and make right turns at red lights at significant speed.
Those who ride electric bicycles and scooters illegally on sidewalks are especially vulnerable to being killed or mangled in crosswalks, because they are going so fast.
One day — too nervous to venture onto highly lethal Scott Road — I myself cycled on the sidewalk, only to have two different cars turn off Scott Road at two different intersections, and fly past me while I was halfway between the curbs, one missing me by two metres, and another by a mere metre, both of them driving fast enough to kill me; the second driver startled to see me, for the first time, when he looked to his left as he was flying past me.
If I’d entered either of those intersections a second or less earlier, I would not be writing this letter.
Way more police cars were on the road here in the ‘60s than today, pulling cars over for not signalling (an option commonly not practised today) and not stopping (again, an option by practice).
As a long-haired youth, I was pulled over virtually every time I drove, often as much as three times in a day, purely to hassle.
Don DeMille