Safer Roads Need More Than Promises- Sheetal Narwal Has a Plan

By Sheetal Narwal | Candidate, Ward 6 City Councillor | July 2026

I want to talk to you about road safety in Stittsville — but not the way politicians usually do.

Not vague promises about "making our streets safer." Not feel-good announcements that sound great until you check whether anything actually changed. I want to talk about what has happened on real streets in this community, with real names, real dates, and real sources you can check yourself.

Because I think you deserve to know the truth about our roads. Not a version cleaned up for a campaign brochure. The actual truth.

So here it is.

What Has Actually Happened on Ward 6 Roads and Close Vicinity to Us Since 2015

Everything below is sourced from Ottawa Police statements, CBC News, CTV Ottawa, and Stittsville Central. These are not opinions. These are things that actually happened.

April 26, 2015 — Eagleson Road at Fallowfield Road: A 23-year-old man killed. A second man seriously injured.

January 20, 2017 — Fallowfield Road at Eagleson Road: One man killed, three others injured in a two-vehicle crash at around 7pm.

February 2, 2017 — Same intersection. Fourteen days later: A car and truck collided at the exact same spot — two men sent to the Trauma Centre with serious injuries. Same corner. A death. Then another serious crash. Two weeks apart. Nothing changed between them.

May 21, 2017 — Hazeldean Road at Terry Fox Road: A 15-year-old boy on a bike was hit by a car at 8:43am on his way to school — serious head injury, taken to hospital.

June 18, 2017 — Fernbank Road: Michaela Martel, 18, and Maddie Clement, 17, were killed when their car left Fernbank Road and crashed into the trees. Two young people from Stittsville did not come home.

September 25, 2017 — Carp Road at Hazeldean Road: Multiple cars crashed. Residents had been asking for safety fixes for years. The city's official response on record: traffic was "not heavy enough to justify any changes." Construction on that intersection does not begin until September 2026 — nine years later.

May 29, 2020 — March Road at Carp Road: A 71-year-old woman was trapped in her car after a T-bone collision with a transport trailer — chest and abdominal trauma, fractured leg, had to be cut out of the vehicle by firefighters.

April 2020 — Flewellyn Road near Ashton/Ormond: A woman in her 70s was found in life-threatening condition after a serious rollover and had to be extricated from her vehicle.

April 2020 — Highway 417 at Eagleson Road westbound off-ramp: A vehicle rollover left one person trapped and taken to the Trauma Centre.

July 2020 — Stittsville Main Street at Hobin Street: A 10-year-old boy was seriously injured in a collision — serious leg and abdominal injuries. Stittsville Main Street was closed between Carp Road and Hobin Street. A child. On our main street.

November 26, 2023 — Carp Road: A woman in her 50s was killed in a two-vehicle crash. Carp Road had been identified as dangerously in need of widening a full decade earlier — in 2013.

November 28, 2023 — Fernbank Road. Two days later: A 52-year-old man was killed when his vehicle rolled over between Jinkinson and Blacks Side roads — the same stretch of Fernbank Road where Michaela and Maddie were killed in 2017. Firefighters removed the roof to reach him. He was pronounced dead on scene. Same road. Same section. Six years apart.

July 22, 2025 — Sweetnam Drive, Stittsville: A woman was hit by a car while cycling and taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries. (Source: CBC News; Stittsville Central)

Every year, 2018–2026 — Residential speeding in Fairwinds, Timbermere, Blackstone, and Amberwood: Residents raise concerns every year. Rubber safety posts go up in spring and come down every winter. Every fix happened only after residents complained loudly enough to be heard.

What the Numbers Show

It is not just our streets. The broader picture makes the same point.

Ottawa road deaths jumped 30% in 2017 compared to 2015 — going from 26 deaths in 2016 to 32 deaths in 2017. That is the same year Fernbank Road claimed two young lives and Carp-Hazeldean had its crash.

By 2024, Ottawa Police recorded close to 20,000 vehicle crashes in one year across the city.

In 2020 — a pandemic year with dramatically reduced traffic on the roads — Ottawa still recorded 10,047 reportable collisions and 18 road fatalities city-wide. The City's own 2020 Road Safety Report listed Terry Fox Drive at Palladium/Katimavik among Ottawa's top 10 worst signalized collision locations, with 23 collisions at that intersection in 2020 alone.

At 19 Ottawa intersections that needed traffic lights but didn't have them yet, there were 102 crashes over just three years. Some of those intersections are in or near Ward 6.

Ontario speeding deaths hit a 10-year high in 2021 — 315 people died, a 31% jump in speeding-related deaths in just one year.

The Roads Were Known to Be Dangerous — And Still Nothing Moved

This is the part that should make every Stittsville resident angry.

Carp Road was flagged as needing widening in the city's own road plan back in 2013. The city promised it would be done between 2016 and 2022. It is now 2026 and construction is only just beginning. A woman was killed on that road in 2023 — while it was still waiting to be fixed.

Fernbank Road, where Michaela and Maddie were killed in 2017, still does not have proper sidewalks and cycling lanes proportionate to how many people live along that corridor.

There are still gaps in sidewalks on Hazeldean Road, Fernbank Road, and West Ridge Drive where pedestrians have to walk on the road shoulder next to moving traffic.

To Be Fair — Here Is What Was Done

I believe in being straight with you, so I want to be clear about what has actually happened on the positive side.

Rubber safety posts have been installed on 26 Ward 6 streets. In some spots they have made a real difference. Consultations were held in 2025 for residents on Maple Grove, Kittiwake Drive, and Springbrook Drive who were fed up with speeders on their streets.

Those things matter. They are real. I am not dismissing them.

But here is the honest truth: an annual budget of $50,000 for traffic safety in a community of 52,000 people is not a plan. It is barely a start. It works out to about a dollar per person. And rubber posts that go up in spring and come down before winter means the problem just comes back every November.

Most importantly — the system only responds when you complain. If you do not know how to complain, or you do not have time, or you are new to the community, or English is not your first language — your street does not get safer. That is not fair.

What Other Countries Did — Vision Zero

Here is proof that this problem is solvable.

Nordic countries have already been doing this and Sweden is now the safest country in the world for road travel.

They did it through a program called Vision Zero — which recorded zero pedestrian deaths, zero cyclist deaths, and zero child deaths on its roads — born in Sweden in 1994 and now adopted by cities across the world.

The idea is simple: humans will always make mistakes. The road system must be designed so that mistakes do not kill people.

Vision Zero cities do six specific things: lower speed limits to 30 km/h near schools and pedestrian areas; build physically separated cycling lanes; replace dangerous intersections with roundabouts; investigate every single fatal crash to find road design failures; use data to fix the most dangerous spots first; and treat road safety as a non-negotiable political priority across party lines.

Ottawa's own Road Safety Action Plan already uses the "Safe Systems" approach — the foundation of Vision Zero. The framework exists. What Ward 6 has not had is a councillor who fights for it every budget cycle until it becomes real here.

I will be that councillor.

What I Will Do Differently

Here is my specific commitment to Ward 6 — not general ideas, actual things I will do.

• In my first 200 days: initiate a full safety review of Ward 6 roads. I will initiate review and work with the city's Traffic Services team to identify the 20 most dangerous streets and intersections in the ward — based on crash history and resident complaints — and I will publish the results publicly so everyone can see where their street stands.

• A motion at council to lower residential speed limits to 40 km/h ward-wide — and 30 km/h in school zones during school hours. If a car hits someone at 50 km/h, that person has roughly a 75% chance of dying. At 40 km/h that drops to 25%. At 30 km/h near a school, it drops further still. Changing a speed limit sign costs almost nothing. Saving a child's life is priceless. I will push for both.

• Stop waiting for residents to complain before fixing dangerous streets. City Hall should be doing their job in the first place — not relying on residents to do it for them for free. You should not have to file a complaint, attend a consultation, and fight for months just to get a rubber post on your street. I will proactively push the city to find the dangerous spots and fix them before people get hurt, not after.

• Push for traffic lights at Ward 6 intersections on the waiting list. There are Ottawa intersections that need signals and don't have them. Ward 6 traffic lights on the wait list become my top priority the day I take office.

• Monthly updates on road safety — every single month. What streets are being reviewed. What's getting fixed. What's in the queue. Published the first week of every month in plain language on my website. You will never have to wonder what is happening again.

• A live public road safety feedback map for Ward 6 - something no Ward 6 councillor has offered before. Any Stittsville resident can submit a complaint about a dangerous intersection, a speeding problem, or a road safety concern, and everyone can see every complaint submitted, how many residents have flagged the same spot, and what stage it is at. No more phoning 311 and wondering if anyone heard you. No more feeling like your complaint disappeared into a black hole. If ten people flag the same corner on Maple Grove, that corner moves up the list and everyone can see it happen in real time. Transparency is accountability. If you can see the complaints, you can see whether your councillor is acting on them. And this does not require a million-dollar system — it can be live within weeks of taking office.

One Last Thing

I want to be direct with you about why I am writing this.

I have walked 90% of the streets in Stittsville so far — from north to south, east to west. I have talked to parents who are scared to let their kids ride bikes. Seniors who feel unsafe walking to the store. Families who have watched their neighbourhood grow and grow while the roads stayed the same.

The incidents in this article are not statistics to me. They are our neighbours. Our community. They happened here, on roads that all of us use.

I am running to change what happens next. Not with promises, with a specific plan, published publicly, that you can hold me to every single month.

Building the Stittsville We Deserve means every person in this ward, whether they are driving, cycling, or just trying to cross the street, gets home safely.

That work starts October 26th.

📧 info@sheetalnarwal.ca

📞 (343) 543-6363

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