Abstract
Due to the presence of various traffic calming measures (TCM) and traffic lights in urban areas, the speed of vehicles is maintained low. Nevertheless, a problem arises in the frontier between urban and non-urban areas because drivers must adapt their speed and behavior to new conditions. This risk becomes even greater in rural roads that penetrate small villages without a bypass and with a short urban segment, since drivers do not normally speed down in these segments. Various measures can be installed, but traffic lights that turn red if the speed limit is exceeded is not usually considered as a TCM in the literature. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the efficiency of traffic lights turning red in case of exceeding speed limit. The village of Ábalos in Spain was selected for this research, with an urban area of 630 m and this type of traffic lights in both directions. Results showed that drivers do not respect the speed limit - and hence, the red light - when they are placed separately. However, if they are placed next to a crosswalk, their effect is increased. Consequently, it is recommended to place these traffic lights with a crosswalk to reinforce the efficiency of both TCMs.
Highlights
Despite the important decrease registered in the total number of fatalities in road traffic in developed countries during the last years, road safety is still a major problem around the world, and it has become the leading cause of premature death (Studer et al, 2018; Ptak, 2019; Llopis-Castelló and Findley, 2019; Shah and Ahmad, 2019)
A fixed radar was placed on the crosswalk with the traffic lights of point B3/A4 for 24 hours, from August at 11:30 a.m. to August
Traffic lights turning red if the speed limit is exceeded were controlled to assess their efficiency as traffic calming measures, installed in the transition between an interurban and an urban area, in the case of interurban roads crossing a small, unbypassed village for a short length
Summary
Despite the important decrease registered in the total number of fatalities in road traffic in developed countries during the last years, road safety is still a major problem around the world, and it has become the leading cause of premature death (Studer et al, 2018; Ptak, 2019; Llopis-Castelló and Findley, 2019; Shah and Ahmad, 2019). In the European Union (EU-28), the number of fatalities in collisions decreased from 57 006 to 25 767 between 2000 and 2016 (54,7%) (EUROSTAT, 2018). In the United States, a rate of 35 000 people dead in crashes per year is registered (FHWA, 2018). In Spain, even a higher decrease was observed in the same period (2000-2016), 68,7% (from 5 776 to 1 810) (EUROSTAT, 2018).
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