Improving Pedestrian Safety at Unsignalized Crossings (2006) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 32-42
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Background A field study approach was developed to provide insight into the actual behavior of motorists and pedestrians at locations with existing pedestrian crossing treatments. The specific measures of effectiveness (MOEs)
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Motorist compliance Percent of motorists yielding or stopping for pedestrians Number of cars that stopped for (or yielded to) the staged pedestrian divided by the number of cars that should have stopped Table 15.
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A video recording was made of the crossing to permit review and data reduction after the actual crossing event occurred. It was necessary to observe actual pedestrian behavior (rather than simply using staged pedestrians)
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Staged pedestrians were used in the belief that consistent presentation of a pedestrian intent to cross was critical for comparing motorist compliance results from different locations or areas of the country; in other words, pedestrian positioning, stance, and aggressiveness affect a motorist's decision to stop or yield at a pedestrian crossing. For example, motorists are less likely to stop or yield when pedestrians stand several feet behind the curb line (e.g., the pedestrian may appear as though they are waiting instead of intending to cross)
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Collection Approaches To obtain the general population and staged pedestrian data, the following data collection approaches were used: • Videocameras were used to provide a permanent record of pedestrian and motorist behavior. • Palmtop computers were used on site to record certain aspects of pedestrian and motorist behavior.
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■ Two-way left-turn lanes and other median treatments that vehicles routinely enter are not considered appropriate refuge for pedestrians. ■ Curb extensions, roadway narrowing, raised crosswalks, and other design treatments or trafficcalming elements can also be used to improve the safety of unsignalized pedestrian crossings.
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Observation Data Collection Approach Despite the advantages of video data collection, the use of only video data would have had some significant drawbacks. First, the amount of time necessary to pull all pedestrian and motorist characteristics from the video for each crossing would be immense.
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Figures 16 and 17 illustrate video records with insufficient resolution; the crossing pedestrians are circled for emphasis. Because of these limitations, it was decided that members of the research team should make personal visual observations on site during the intervals of video data collection.
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site characteristics were recorded by hand on a pre-printed data sheet and supplemented by a hand-drawn sketch of the geometric configuration of the site. The sketch contained key geometric dimensions of the study site, which were recorded by hand measurements, as shown in Figure 19.
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Summary The research used observational studies of motorist and pedestrian behavior to evaluate the effectiveness of pedestrian crossing treatments at 42 sites in seven states. Several measures of effectiveness were used as surrogates for safety performance, because the timing and duration of the study did not 41 A)
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permit the collection of before-and-after pedestrian crash data at several promising study sites. Several criteria were used to select the study sites, chief among them: presence of a marked crosswalk, pedestrian activity, proximity to transit stops, and high-volume, high-speed streets.
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