Written By: Patrick Brown, Principal Partner
6 Minute Read
Andrew’s Law is a proposed set of changes in Ontario’s justice bill that would introduce a lifetime driver’s licence ban for anyone convicted of dangerous driving causing death, along with tougher immediate suspensions, impound powers, and higher fines for dangerous and distracted driving. It is an emotionally powerful response to a tragic loss, but on its own it does not come close to addressing the everyday, systemic dangers faced by people walking, cycling, and using mobility devices on Ontario’s roads.
On CBC’s Metro Morning, lawyer at McLeish Orlando and longtime road safety advocate, Patrick Brown, emphasized how limited this government’s approach remains. He pointed out that this is a great step forward, but real change requires listening to evidence and to the people most affected by road violence. “This is one step forward to deal with the extreme bad apples but when you look at road safety there are so many other things that should be done and actually have been requested to be done.” His comments echo what safe streets advocates have been saying for years: without protected infrastructure, lower speeds, and meaningful protections in law, Ontario will continue to see preventable deaths on its streets.
Andrew’s Law is named after Andrew Cristillo, a 35‑year‑old father of three who was killed in a head‑on crash in Whitchurch‑Stouffville, a crash that also seriously injured his wife and young daughters. In line with his family’s advocacy, the government plans to create a lifetime licence suspension for anyone convicted of dangerous driving causing death, alongside increased penalties for repeat dangerous driving offences.
The bill would also allow police to immediately suspend a licence for 90 days and impound a vehicle when they believe someone is driving dangerously, and it introduces a sliding scale of fines, suspensions, and impound periods for first and subsequent offences. The government has also noted it will increase fines for distracted driving and expand road safety education for young drivers as part of this package.
This is a good step, but limited
Stronger consequences for the most egregious dangerous driving cases can send an important message that a driver’s licence is a privilege, not a right, especially when someone’s choices result in death. Families like the Cristillos, who have lost loved ones in preventable crashes, are right to demand that repeat and extreme offenders are permanently kept off the road.
However, the most serious criminal cases are only the tip of the iceberg; day‑to‑day road violence usually does not look like a single high‑profile case but rather thousands of collisions and serious injuries that never make the news. As Patrick mentioned with CBC, “the vast majority of people being killed by road violence are people running red lights, going through stop signs, speeding, looking at their cell phones, those individuals this law does not apply to, those individuals have laws that result in them walking away with a small fines.”
Evidence from various road safety researchers consistently shows that the biggest gains in saving lives come not from punishing after the fact, but from preventing dangerous situations in the first place through safe street design, lower speeds, and predictable enforcement.
If Ontario’s government truly prioritized road safety, it would not only pass a high‑profile law after a tragedy; it would listen to advocates and experts who have been clear about what is actually killing people: speed, unsafe road design, the exposure of vulnerable road users, and the dangers of oversized vehicles. Vulnerable road user protections have been proposed repeatedly in Ontario, yet a comprehensive vulnerable road user bill has been voted down by this government five times, even as families and advocates have urged them to adopt proven, evidence‑based measures.
The day the Ford government announced Andrew’s Law, they simultaneously passed a controversial and contradictory bill which amends the Highway Traffic Act to ban municipalities from building any bike lanes that would involve road reconfiguration. Effectively halting the progress cities have made to build safer streets for all road users. The government has also made decisions to remove existing bike lanes and automated speed enforcement cameras, despite clear data that protected cycling infrastructure and speed cameras reduce serious injuries and fatalities. By dismantling or discouraging the very tools that are known to prevent collisions, the province undercuts its own rhetoric about “real consequences” and “road safety education.”
Andrew’s Law may provide some measure of accountability in the most extreme cases, and it honours one family’s painful advocacy in the wake of an unimaginable loss. But a law that acts only after someone has been killed will never be enough in a province where preventable deaths continue on streets designed to prioritize driver convenience over human life.
If Ontario is serious about ending road violence, Andrew’s Law must be just the beginning: the government needs to finally pass a robust vulnerable road user bill, protect and expand bike lanes, scrap their plan to remove speed cameras, and invest in the redesign of dangerous roads using proven safety principles. Until those systemic, preventative changes are made, new criminal penalties alone will continue to result in continued serious injury and death on our roads.
