Pedestrians

Driver/Pedestrian Understanding and Behavior at Marked and Unmarked Crosswalks

Ragland, David R.
Mitman, Meghan Fehlig
2007

Pedestrian injuries at crosswalk locations represent a significant problem. In 2002, 22.7 percent of US pedestrians involved in collisions were in a crosswalk at the time of the collision, and over 96% of these occurred at an intersection. Almost all crosswalk collisions resulted in pedestrian injury or fatality (98.6 percent), and about one-third resulted in severe or fatal injury (National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) and General Estimates System (GES) 2002). As the owner of the California State Highway System, Caltrans is responsible for providing access to safe and convenient...

A Review of ITS-Based Pedestrian Injury Countermeasures

Bechtel, Allyson K
Geyer, Judy
Ragland, David R
2003

Crashes between motor vehicles and pedestrians caused at least 4,882 deaths and about 78,000 injuries in 2001 in the United States. In recognition of these troubling statistics, many public and private institutions look to Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technologies. Few resources are available to provide a comprehensive summary of the effectiveness of these options. This report reviews previous scientific evaluation of red light enforcement cameras, illuminated walk signal push buttons, automated pedestrian detection systems for traffic signals, flashing crosswalk lights,...

Pedestrian Volume Modeling for Traffic Safety and Exposure Analysis:

Raford, Noah
Ragland, David R.
2005

This paper examines three types of pedestrian volume models in light of their usefulness for estimating pedestrian exposure for pedestrian safety research. The need for pedestrian flow data as part of pedestrian exposure and safety analysis is outlined, and the background of each type of model is discussed. It then selects the space syntax network analysis model to estimate pedestrian volumes for the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It was found that the model was able to accurately predict pedestrian flows (r-squared 0.81, p-value < 0.0001) after incorporating distance to transit...

Space Syntax: The Role of Urban Form in Cyclist Route Choice in Central London

Raford, Noah
Chiaradia, Alain
Gil, Jorge
2007

This paper presents a new method for forecasting cyclist volume and route choice based on space syntax techniques for urban analysis. Space syntax has been shown to correlate strongly with pedestrian and vehicular trips in a number of international studies, but little research to date has focused on the role of urban form and street network design in cyclist route choice. This paper addresses this gap by analyzing the distribution of cycling trips in the central London area, focusing on a sample of work-based commuting trips. A sample of 423 cyclists from 50 organizations was combined with...

A Database for Active Transportation Infrastructure and Volume

Proulx, Frank R.
Zhang, Yuanyuan, PhD
Grembek, Offer, PhD
2014

Information about pedestrian infrastructure and volume is indispensable to monitoring, evaluating, and improving the environment for comfortable and safe walking. However, determining and organizing the various types of data in a way that is easy to update and analyze can present challenges. This study designed and developed a relational database for pedestrian infrastructure and volume, and comprises two core components (node table and approach table) and several sub-components (tables for crosswalks, sidewalks, buffers, signs, transits, bikeways, bicycle parking, and volumes). Important...

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

Ragland, David R
Pande, Swati
Bigham, John
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 shift...

Estimating Pedestrian Accident Exposure: Protocol Report

Greene-Roesel, Ryan
Diogenes, Mara Chagas
Ragland, David R
2007

Walking is a healthful, environmentally benign form of travel, and is the most basic form of human mobility. Walking trips account for more than 8 percent of all trips taken in California, making walking the second most commonly used mode of travel after the personal automobile (Caltrans, 2002). In addition, many trips made by vehicle or public transit begin and end with walking. In spite of the importance and benefits of walking, pedestrians suffer a disproportionate share of the harm of traffic incidents in California. As noted above, walking trips make up just 8 percent of all trips in...

Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Evaluation for the City of Emeryville at Four Intersections

Johnson, Emily S.
Ragland, David R
Cooper, Jill F
O'Connor, Terri
2005

The City of Emeryville is small in area (1.2 square miles) and population (7,000), but it is one of the most regionally connected cities in the Bay Area (California). Emeryville is situated at the eastern end of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, contains the intersection of Interstate Highway 80 (I-80) with several regional and other interstate highways, and has extensive transportation access by Amtrak Rail, Alameda County (AC) Transit and heavy cargo facilities at the nearby Port of Oakland. The city has many large employers and several large shopping areas, and the daytime...

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

MacLeod, Kara E.
Griswold, Julia
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, logistic...

The Continuing Debate about Safety in Numbers—Data From Oakland, CA

Geyer, Judy
Raford, Noah
Ragland, David
Pham, Trinh
2005

The primary objective of this paper is to review the appropriate use of ratio variables in the study of pedestrian injury exposure. We provide a discussion that rejects the assumption that the relationship between a random variable (e.g., a population X) and a ratio (e.g., injury or disease per population Y/X) is necessarily negative. In the study of pedestrian risk, the null hypothesis is that pedestrian injury risk is constant with respect to pedestrian volume. This study employs a unique data set containing the number of pedestrian collisions, average annual pedestrian volume, average...