Development and Implementation of Conflict-Based Assessment of Pedestrian Safety to Evaluate Accessibility of Complex Intersections

Abstract

This paper develops and implements the Conflict-based Assessment of Pedestrian Safety (CAPS) methodology for evaluating pedestrian accessibility at complex intersections. In past years, a significant research has been done on pedestrian access to modern roundabouts and other complex intersection forms, including a significant focus on the accessibility for pedestrians who are blind. A majority of these studies have relied on actual street crossings by study participants under supervision of trained Orientation and Mobility (O&M) Specialist. These crossing studies were used to evaluate risk from a measurement of intervention events, where the O&M specialist had to physically stop the participant from crossing. While providing arguably the most accurate data for the crossing risk at a particular intersection, actual street crossings can be dangerous to the study participants, and are further very time consuming and expensive to conduct. The CAPS method presented in this paper emphasizes the use of conflict-based safety factors to quantify risk. The CAPS method relates pedestrian crossing decisions to advanced measurements of vehicle dynamics to estimate lane-by-lane conflicts. CAPS identifies the grade of conflict based on a score generated on a five-criterion rating scale. Each of these criteria or factors has different severity levels, and when combined, provides an overall risk rating of the crossing decision. The CAPS framework was applied to a study of blind pedestrian crossings at a multi-lane roundabout. The resulting risk scores were calibrated from actual O&M interventions observed during the study to give confidence in the CAPS performance. The calibrated CAPS framework correctly matched all (high risk) O&M intervention events, and further identifies other (lower risk) pedestrian-vehicle conflicts. The resulting method has the potential to allow for a faster and most importantly safer evaluation of complex intersections for pedestrian access. Since all factors are measured prior to the pedestrian stepping into the roadway, this approach is compatible with crossing indicator studies, where the participants merely indicate when they would cross, rather than actually stepping into the roadway. The CAPS framework therefore allows for a more objective and consistent safety assessment of pedestrian crossings in a research context without having pedestrians physically step into the roadway.