Old Finch and Sewells Road, a quiet crossroads which evokes Scarborough’s rural past, is one of Toronto’s stranger intersections.
To start with, it doesn’t seem to be in the city at all – though on the edge of suburbia, it’s still a quiet country crossroads, with the Rouge River burbling nearby. It’s the sleepiest intersection that city officials bothered to count traffic on – of 2,209 places where traffic was counted, it ranks 2,209.
But accident for accident, in relation to the level of traffic, it may be Toronto’s most dangerous.
The prudent driver will notice the steep hill, two blind corners in opposite directions – hard to keep an eye on both – and the semi-official gravel lane for traffic turning north, and may puzzle over the one-lane Bailey bridge, a leftover from Hurricane Hazel now more than half a century old.
| 1) Old Finch and Sewells |
| 2) Jameson and Lake Shore |
| 3) Eglinton and William R Allen Rd |
| 4) Eglinton and Yonge |
| 5) Dufferin and St. Clair |
| 6) Old Weston Rd. and St. Clair |
| 7) Finch and Yonge |
| 8) Finch and Jane |
| 9) Jane and Sheppard |
| 10) Jane and Wilson |
“The sightlines on this side and that side are pretty bad so you can’t really see cars coming, and they seem to go a little quick on occasion,” observed driver Sid Mazni as he stopped at the top of the T-junction.
What are Toronto’s worst intersections for drivers? Global News looked at the question by combining two databases: the City’s counts of traffic levels at intersections, and ten years of traffic accident reports filed with Toronto police, which show intersections that the accident occurred at or near. Using the two numbers, we created a ratio.
Put together, the two tend to show the city’s more dangerous intersections in relation to traffic levels – a busy intersection that’s relatively safe won’t come out at the top of the list, while a quiet one with many accidents relative to the traffic levels will.
That puts Old Finch and Sewells, with a relatively small number of 66 accidents between 2001 and 2010, at the top of the list. Seventeen of them (or 26%) involved some kind of injury, higher than the city average of 18%.
Jameson Ave. and Lake Shore Blvd. W. was in the #2 slot (or the most dangerous major intersection) followed by the Allen Expressway and Eglinton Ave. W.
“Whether you’re a pedestrian, a cyclist or a motorist, you can’t move throughout our community without making some assumptions,” cautions city transportation manager Mike Brady. “And one of the assumptions that you can’t make is that the other guy is going to look out for you.”
Worst 50 Toronto intersections
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