Pedestrian Safety

Crosswalk Confusion: More Evidence Why Pedestrian and Driver Knowledge of the Vehicle Code Should Not Be Assumed

Mitman, Meghan F.
Ragland, David R.
2014

Traffic safety researchers have long argued that driver behavior outweighs physical elements (such as road design) as a causal factor in motor vehicle collisions. A fundamental causal component of pedestrian—vehicle collisions is also behavior: that of the driver and that of the pedestrian. One determinant of this behavior may be whether the driver, the pedestrian, or both understand the motor vehicle code, which demarcates the right-of-way in pedestrian-vehicle interactions. That is, inappropriate or unlawful behavior may occur because the law is not understood or is misunderstood....

Pedestrian Safety Improvement Program

Grembek, Offer
Bosman, Craig
Bigham, John M.
Fine, Sara
Griswold, Julia B.
Medury, Aditya
Sanders, Rebecca L.
Schneider, Robert J.
Yavari, Afsaneh
Zhang, Yuanyuan
Ragland, David R.
2014

The Pedestrian Safety Improvement Program is an effort of the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to identify and address systemic problems with regard to pedestrian safety in California, with the long-term goal of substantially reducing pedestrian fatalities and injuries in California. The efforts and findings presented in this report reflect the work of a team of experts in transportation engineering, transportation planning, public health, geographic information systems, and urban design from the UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research & Education Center.

Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety Effects of the California Safe Routes to School Program

Gutierrez, Nicolas
Orenstein, Marla
Cooper, Jill F.
Rice, Thomas M.
Ragland, David R.
2008

In the last decade, there has been an increased focus in California on encouraging children to walk and bicycle to school safely. In 1999, the California Legislature created the Safe Routes to School (SR2S) program, authorizing issuance of a competitive grant process for roadway construction projects. There has been an overall decline in the numbers of child pedestrian/bicyclist collisions in California as a whole. When compared with the control areas, the SR2S project areas did not show a greater decline in numbers of collisions. However, it is likely that the number of children...

Ten Years Later: Examining the Long-Term Impact of the California Safe Routes to School Program

Ragland, David R.
Pande, Swati
Bigham, John M.
Cooper, Jill F.
2014

California was the first state to legislate a Safe Routes to School (SR2S) program under Assembly Bill AB 1475 (1999). SR2S funds construction projects that make it safer for children to walk/ bicycle to school and encourage a greater number of children to choose these modes of travel for the school commute. The main goal of this project was to assess the long-term impact of program-funded engineering modifications on walking/bicycling levels and on safety. Evaluation of improvements was determined using a targeted method of determining the countermeasures to result in safety and mode...

Driver and Pedestrian Behavior at Uncontrolled Crosswalks in the Tahoe Basin Recreation Area

Mitman, Meghan F.
Cooper, Douglas L.
DuBose, Brooke
2010

For more than thirty years, pedestrian safety studies have considered pedestrian-vehicle collision patterns and pedestrian and driver behavior at marked and unmarked crosswalks at uncontrolled crossings. Recent research in this area conducted by the UC Berkeley Traffic Safety Center [aka SafeTREC] on behalf of Caltrans, and summarized in a 2008 Transportation Research Record paper by Mitman et al., “The Marked Crosswalk Dilemma: Uncovering Some Missing Links in a 35-Year Debate,” was designed to fill key gaps in the literature by analyzing driver/pedestrian behavior and knowledge of...

Factors Associated with Hit-and-Run Pedestrian Fatalities and Driver Identification

MacLeod, Kara E.
Griswold, Julia B.
Arnold, Lindsay S.
Ragland, David R.
2010

Because hit-and-run crashes account for a significant share of pedestrian fatalities, a better understanding of these crashes will assist efforts to reduce pedestrian fatalities. Of the more than 48,000 pedestrian deaths that were recorded in the United States between 1998 and 2007 (Fatality Accident Reporting System [FARS]), 18.1% of them were the victims of hit-and-run crashes, and the percentage of fatal pedestrian hit-and-runs has been rising as the number of all pedestrian fatalities has decreased. Using FARS data on single pedestrian fatal victim crashes between 1998-2007,...

Association between Roadway Intersection Characteristics and Pedestrian Crash Risk in Alameda County, California

Schneider, Robert J.
Diogenes, Mara Chagas
Arnold, Lindsay S.
Attaset, Vanvisa
Griswold, Julia B.
Ragland, David R.
2010

Each year from 1998 to 2007, an average of approximately 4,800 pedestrians were killed and 71,000 pedestrians were injured in United States traffic crashes. Because many pedestrian crashes occur at roadway intersections, it is important to understand the intersection characteristics that are associated with pedestrian crash risk. This study uses detailed pedestrian crash data and pedestrian volume estimates to analyze pedestrian crash risk at 81 intersections along arterial and collector roadways in Alameda County, California. The analysis compares pedestrian crash rates (crashes per 10,...

Influential Factors on Level of Injury in Pedestrian Crashes: Applications of Ordered Probit Model with Robust Standard Errors

Jang, Kitae
Park, Shin Hyoung
Chung, Sungbong
Song, Ki Han
2010

Pedestrian-involved crashes that occurred in the city of San Francisco over a six-year period, 2002–2007, were analyzed to examine various influential factors on the injury severity of pedestrian crashes. The crash data extracted from the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) include five categorical levels of injury severity in traffic crashes also in addition to detailed information about the features of each crash. This study applied an ordered probit model for injury severity analysis to specify the ordinal nature of injury categories. To draw unbiased implications...

Effectiveness of a Commercially Available Automated Pedestrian Counting Device in Urban Environments: Comparison with Manual Counts

Greene-Roesel, Ryan
Diogenes, Mara Chagas
Ragland, David R.
Lindau, Luis Antonio
2008

High-quality continuous counts of pedestrian volume are necessary to evaluate the effects of pedestrian infrastructure investments and to improve pedestrian volume modeling. Automated pedestrian counting devices can meet the need for continuous counts of pedestrian volume and reduce the labor cost associated with manual pedestrian counting and data entry. However, most existing automated pedestrian devices are not well suited to the task of counting pedestrians in outdoor environments, and little is known about their effectiveness and accuracy. This study addresses the lack of...

San Francisco PedSafe II Project Outcomes and Lessons Learned

Hua, Jenna
Gutierrez, Nicolas
Banerjee, Ipsita
Markowitz, Frank
Ragland, David R.
2009

This paper presents the project outcomes and lessons learned from the San Francisco PedSafe, a comprehensive pedestrian safety planning and engineering project funded by the Federal Highway Administration. It assesses the effectiveness of the Phase I pedestrian safety plan targeted to higher-injury areas by evaluating the Phase II implementation of a range of mostly low-to- moderate-cost innovative safety improvements.

A total of 13 countermeasures (comprised of nine general engineering countermeasures and four Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)...