Editorial: Vision zero: the safe system approach and traffic safety culture

According to the World Health Organization, in 2018, traffic crashes killed over 1.35 million people (WHO, 2018). While some nations have seen declining trends in traffic fatalities post-COVID-19, for many nations, especially the United States, traffic fatalities continue to grow at an alarming rate. This rise is especially problematic for the most vulnerable, as pedestrians and bicyclists continue to be killed at disproportionate rates in many countries (ITF, 2022). Thus, for much of the world, a new traffic safety management paradigm is needed

Technical report (Texas Tech University. Center for Multidisciplinary Research in Transportation)

"The goal of this research project was to synthesize successful practices of bicycle planning in mid-size cities, including reviews of bicycle practices in the U.S. and successful experiences in planning, design, and implementation of bicycle facilities, conduct a survey of successful bicycle policies and practices in the U.S., and identify common problems in bicycling and key factors for promoting bicycling transportation.

Investigation of the Contributory Factors to the Guessability of Traffic Signs

Traffic signs play an important role in traffic management systems. A variety of studies have focused on drivers’ comprehension of traffic signs. However, the travel safety of prospective users, which has been rarely mentioned in previous studies, has attracted considerable attention from relevant departments in China. With the growth of international and interregional travel demand, traffic signs should be designed more universally to reduce the potential risks to drivers. To identify key factors that improve prospective users’ sign comprehension, this study investigated eight factors that may affect users’ performance regarding sign guessing. Two hundred and one Chinese students, all of whom intended to be drivers and none of whom had experience with daily driving after obtaining a license or visits to Germany, guessed the meanings and rated the sign features of 54 signs. We investigated the effects of selected user factors on their sign guessing performance. Additionally, the contributions of four cognitive design features to the guessability of traffic signs were examined. Based on an analysis of the relationships between the cognitive features and the guessability score of signs, the contributions of four sign features to the guessability of traffic signs were examined. Moreover, by exploring Chinese users’ differences in guessing performance between Chinese signs and German signs, cultural issues in sign design were identified. The results showed that vehicle ownership and attention to traffic signs exerted a significant influence on guessing performance. As expected, driver’s license training and the number of years in college were dominant factors for guessing performance. With regard to design features, semantic distance and confidence in guessing were two dominant factors for the guessability of signs. We suggest improving the design of signs by including vivid, universal symbols. Thus, we provide several suggestions for designing more user-friendly signs

Measuring Pedestrian Level of Stress in Urban Environments: Naturalistic Walking Pilot Study

Walking is the most basic and sustainable mode of transportation, and many jurisdictions would like to see increased walking rates as a way of reducing congestion and emission levels and improving public health. In the United States, walking trips account for 10.5% of all trips undertaken. To increase this rate, additional research on what makes people feel more comfortable while walking is needed. Research on pedestrian quality of service (QOS) has sought to quantify the performance of the pedestrian facilities from a pedestrian’s perspective. However, the impact of pedestrian safety countermeasures on pedestrian QOS for roadway crossings is largely unknown. The objective of this study is to discern pedestrian QOS based on physiological measurements of pedestrians performing normal walking activities in different traffic contexts. The naturalistic walking study described in this paper recruited 15 pedestrians and asked each to wear an instrumented wristband and GPS recorder on all walking trips for one week. Surprisingly, the findings from the study showed no correlation between participants’ stress levels and individual crossing locations. Instead, stress was associated with roadway conditions. Higher levels of stress were generally associated with walking in proximity to collector and arterial streets and in areas with industrial and mixed (e.g., offices, retail, residential) land uses. Stress levels were tempered in lower-density residential land uses, as well as in forest, park, and university campus environments. The outcomes from this study can inform how planners design urban environments that reduce pedestrian stress levels to promote walkability. Walking is the most basic and sustainable mode of transportation, and many jurisdictions would like to see increased walking rates as a way of reducing congestion and emission levels and improving public health. In the United States, on a typical day in 2017, there were 38.9 million walking trips accounting for 10.5% of all trips undertaken. Walking is thus the second most prevalent mode after driving or riding in an automobile (1). Despite this, walking has received far less attention than the automobile with respect to guidance on planning, designing, and operating safe, functional, and comfortable facilities. Early research efforts on pedestrian quality of service (QOS) analysis employed vehicular performance measures such as delay and density. More recent research efforts have sought to quantify the operation of the pedestrian facilities from the pedestrian’s point of view and have been included in the recent versions of the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) (2, 3). The HCM defines QOS as “a description of how well a transportation facility or service operates from a traveler’s perspective.” The HCM 6th ed. uses pedestrian delay as the basis for determining the level of service (LOS) of uncontrolled street crossings (3). The effects of some countermeasures on LOS can be evaluated using the HCM based on their ability to improve motorist yielding rates to pedestrians, shorten crossing distances, or both, which tends to reduce pedestrian delay. However, it is not known whether the presence of safety countermeasures improved QOS in other ways. For example, all else being equal, does the presence of a safety countermeasure correspond to a decrease in stress for the pedestrian? The objective of this study was to determine how safety countermeasures affect the pedestrian QOS of roadway crossings, based on physiological measurements of pedestrians performing normal walking activities in varied traffic contexts. This study was part of a larger National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Project 17-87, the objective of which was the determine the effect of specific safety countermeasures on pedestrian satisfaction. The larger study followed a three-pronged approach to evaluating pedestrian crossing satisfaction and included the naturalistic walking study, which is the focus of this paper. The naturalistic walking study recruited 15 pedestrians in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and asked each to wear an instrumented wristband and GPS recorder on all walking trips for one week. Physiological measurements, including heart rate (HR) and electrodermal activity (EDA) were collected to record indicators of actual pedestrian stress levels, which are a proxy of pedestrian QOS. During their normal walking trips, participants encountered a variety of environments, from high traffic roadways with signalized intersections to tree-lined paths in pedestrian dominated areas. This provided a variety of contexts from which to compare pedestrian stress levels. This approach is novel in the study of pedestrian satisfaction. The findings from this study demonstrated no correlation between participants’ stress levels and individual crossing locations. Instead, stress was associated with roadway conditions with higher levels of stress being generally associated with walking in proximity to collector and arterial streets and in areas with industrial and mixed (e.g., offices, retail, residential) land uses. Stress levels were tempered in lower-density residential land uses, as well as in forest, park, and university campus environments. The paper is laid out as follows. The background section provides a summary of related work on pedestrian QOS. The methods section is next, followed by results and conclusions

A Safe System-Based Framework and Analytical Methodology for Assessing Intersections [techbrief]

693JJ318F000100In the United States, the Safe System approach represents a paradigm shift in how road safety is addressed. Foundational to the Safe System approach is that no person should be killed or seriously injured when using the road system, and that it is a shared responsibility by all parties involved to ensure this becomes reality. From a roadway infrastructure perspective, a Safe System approach involves managing the circumstances of crashes such that the kinetic energy imposed on the human body be kept at levels that are tolerable in terms of survivability and degree of harm. At an intersection, this challenge is characterized through managing speed and crash angles, as well as considering risk exposure and complexity. This project developed a Safe System for Intersections method that can be applied at a project level and be incorporated into an Intersection Control Evaluation alternatives screening process to provide another metric for safety