A 58-year-old female cyclist has died after being struck by a truck in downtown Toronto Tuesday afternoon, police say.
Officers reported to the scene around 12:00 p.m. Early reports indicated that the cyclist was found without vital signs.
Const. Clint Stibbe of Toronto Traffic Services later confirmed the cyclist had died.
The driver remained on scene.
“Unfortunately, we have to deal with the loss of a life and notification of the family,” Stibbe said.
Stibbe said the intersection is well-travelled and a number of pedestrians were walking through the area. He is urging anyone who witnessed the crash to reach out to police.
“Someone would have seen something,” he said. “Even now as we are standing in the area, there are over 100 pedestrians walking through the area.”
Police are also looking for security footage from surrounding buildings.
Stibbe said the cyclist ended up just east of the intersection. There are bike lanes heading east and west along Bloor Street. Investigators say they will be need to determine if the cyclist was using one of these bike lanes and pinpoint the exact point of impact.
“We need to find to determine everyone’s direction, where they were, to determine exactly what happened in this fatality,” Stibbe said.
This collision marks the third traffic-related fatality involving a cyclist since January 2018.
“So far, this year we have seen three traffic fatalities that were related to cyclists and we’ve had a total of 32 traffic fatalities so far this year. That is up from 27 last year,” he said. “These fatalities are needless. They don’t need to happen. We need to do better.”
Toronto Mayor John Tory addressed the number of fatalities at a news conference after giving a presentation at the Toronto Region Board of Trade, saying he is “devastated” to hear of another traffic-related death.
“It is something that is troubling to me,” he said. “It’s obvious that we’re not yet doing enough. We have a lot more planned to be done and a lot more that is actively being done in terms of making our streets safer, but we haven’t done enough.
Bloor Street was closed from Huron Street to Devonshire Place and St. George Street is closed from Prince Arthur to Sussex avenues. The area has since reopened.
