Residents are calling for a traffic light to be installed at an intersection in North York where an eight-year-old girl was seriously injured last month, and the city says it is investigating now whether one is warranted. The collision occurred on the afternoon of Oct. 26, in the area of Willowdale and Elmwood avenues. Toronto Police said an eight-year-old girl sustained life-threatening injuries while a woman in her 70s suffered non-life-threatening injuries. “I’m also a parent and my kids go to a local school—the same local school as that child victim—and a lot of parents were really shaken by this because it really could have been any one of our children crossing that road,” resident Jasmine Yu said. Yu launched a petition calling on the city to immediately install a traffic light at the intersection and to implement other safety measures until it is fully installed. The petition had generated nearly 500 signatures by late Friday afternoon. While there is a pedestrian crosswalk at the intersection, flashing yellow lights when ignited, Yu says that is not enough. With where the intersection is located, at the top of a hill, she says drivers don’t really see it until they’re close to the intersection. “On a daily basis I see pedestrians pressing lights and cars just ignore it,” Yu told CTV News Toronto. “They don’t slow down, and they keep going.” Yu says she sees near misses all of the time. In one video Yu sent to CTV News Toronto, taken at around 8:15 a.m. on Nov. 4, a pedestrian carrying a backpack can be seen pushing the button to ignite the crossing signal as a white sedan approaches the intersection. The sedan continues to move through the intersection and, at the same time, a white SUV travelling the opposite direction drives through the intersection as the yellow lights continue to flash. The pedestrian then starts to cross, but yet another vehicle can be seen driving through the intersection following the white SUV. While she didn’t witness the most recent collision, Yu said she saw a pedestrian being hit by a car last March. In that incident, a man in his 20s was struck by a vehicle just before 9 p.m. and was sent to the hospital with serious, non-life-threatening injuries. “I had to administer first aid to them while we were waiting for the ambulance,” she said. A spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service confirmed to CTV news Toronto that there have been five reported collisions at the intersection since Jan. 1, 2021. There were two reported collisions in 2026, including the one on Oct. 26, two in 2025, and one in 2023. City staff visited the intersection on Nov. 4 . Coun. Lily Cheng also attended. While Cheng is looking into implementing a traffic signal at the intersection, she says she also wants to reintroduce education about traffic safety in classrooms and plans to talk to Toronto police on what else can be done. The councillor pointed to ‘Elmer the Safety Elephant,’ a mascot introduced in 1947 to educate children on the rules of the road. While Elmer has been used in a few initiatives over the years, police said it is not a regular program and is used in certain circumstances depending on staffing. “I feel like we’ve lost attention to that piece, but people are not having safe practices when they cross the road,” Cheng said. “I teach my kids get eye contact before you cross, do not assume you have the right of way that people see you.” Mike Barnet, director of enforcement and street management for the City of Toronto, confirmed staff are taking a closer look at the intersection to see if a traffic signal is warranted. “As part of the review, staff have initiated an investigation and requested traffic counts to assess the intersection against the City’s Traffic Control Signal Policy. If the review determines that traffic signals are warranted, council approval would be required,” Barnet said. “Staff will also meet with the councillor at the intersection to observe traffic conditions. The results of the assessment will be shared with the councillor once the investigation is complete.” Barnet said the city has only received one service request to install a traffic light at the intersection since 2025. A timeline for when a traffic signal could be installed was not provided. “That’s the difficulty of a large city,” Cheng said, adding that there are two pathways she can take to move the process along, including moving a motion at North York Community Council, which would then go to Toronto City Council. “We’ve seen this happen quite often, especially when it’s triggered by a significant happening at an intersection that we just move a motion for a solution and, I think given the video evidence that I saw, given the fact that it’s uphill from both directions, that the speeding we know is happening and the distracted pedestrians and drivers … I think we can move ahead without necessarily going through a preliminary study.” Yu has also asked that the city deploy a crossing guard ast the intersection but the processing times indicate it could take a minimum of 12 months to carry that out (and only if there is funding available for one). “I think we need a crossing guard immediately in the next couple of months,” she said. There has been a total of 42 traffic-related fatalities in Toronto so far this year. Earlier this week, there were a total of five collisions involving pedestrians reported over a 12-hour period. With files from CP24’s Bryann Aguilar
