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The one that really got me was the 28-year-old mother who was crossing the street, pushing her 12-week-old son in a stroller. She was killed when a driver ran a red light. Her baby survived. There is enough unspeakable sorrow in that one incident to make us gasp and shake our heads. But in Canada’s largest city, it was only one of 14 tragic stories this month as pedestrian after pedestrian was killed in a cluster of street accidents that had everyone wondering what has gone wrong and how we can fix it.

The random deaths – a grandmother, a disabled man in my own neighbourhood – have caused me, like many others, to rethink two of my enduring roles in this urban landscape: my role as a pedestrian and my role as a driver. This exercise reminded me of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous dictum: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” If that’s true, we’re all pretty dumb about street safety because these roles have, in effect, become two opposing ideas we’re not handling well.

Whether it’s because of moving too quickly, continual distraction, badly designed streets or all of the above, as a pedestrian I have come close to being hit by a car, and as a driver I have come even closer to hitting someone.

In both cases, the truth is I treated what I was doing at the time as the only activity that mattered: I’ve walked across busy streets, dodging traffic, to get to the bookstore, and at rush hour I’ve quickly turned right in my car at a corner, not quite noticing the pedestrian in front of me who had the right of way. In the nightmare scenario of all time, I’ve driven toward a crosswalk, not seeing – usually because it’s dark – a person crossing until it’s almost too late to stop.

I’ve been lucky. All I’ve experienced in the aftermath was a pounding heart. But the recent rash of pedestrian deaths have made me think my luck may be about to run out.

Who is at fault here? We all are. As harried pedestrians crossing many streets, we treat traffic signals as mere suggestions and not legally binding instructions on when to move. It is illegal to disobey even that little hand that tells you it’s not yet time to cross – you can get a $50 ticket – but at an incredibly busy intersection in my downtown neighbourhood, walkers regularly ignore it. I’ve learned, when driving, never to assume they will wait their turn.

And yet, as drivers, we can’t drive blindly as if we own the roads, expecting pedestrians to be streetlight-crossing automatons. Contrary to what the Toronto police were implying this week with what one police superintendent called an “educational” ticketing blitz, it’s not always illegal to jaywalk by crossing the street mid-block. You can cross if you’re not impeding traffic, a point that has gotten lost lately.

In fact, as Paul Hess, a professor of geography and planning at the University of Toronto and an expert on suburban walkability, told me in a telephone interview, “Vibrant cities should have jaywalkers. It’s a measure of how good the environment is.” We should be out using our city streets, and many times it is not possible to cross at a light. (Vibrant cities should also have safer ways for pedestrians to get across seven lanes of traffic, as they often have to do on major suburban arteries.)

According to Prof. Hess, in 2006, there were 32 million bus rides along Toronto’s Eglinton Avenue, a major arterial street, which means millions of pedestrians crossing. It is amazing more of us don’t die. (Prof. Hess says 40 pedestrians a year die in Toronto.)

Still, since these recent deaths, I’ve consciously slowed down as a driver, taking more care, especially with right turns. As a pedestrian, crossing where there are no traffic signals, I’ve been making direct eye contact with drivers stalled in traffic before crossing in front of their cars, letting them give me permission. (Although that's probably still illegal.) I’ve even harangued the people I love to “look both ways” and to take out their earbuds.

But unless something exists as a permanent reminder, people temporarily shaken by these deaths will probably fall back into their careless ways. Police can only do so much ticketing.

Cities need an attention-grabbing safety campaign urging pedestrians, drivers and cyclists to share the road safely. Maybe director James Cameron can donate the signature slogan from his new billion-dollar blockbuster, Avatar, to the cause, a treacly phrase that could become as ubiquitous as “ET phone home.”

Spoken in the mythical Na’vi dialect, the words are meant to convey awareness, understanding, respect and even love. But translated, it’s the perfect slogan to remind us there are others out there on the same dangerous streets as we are: “I see you.”