Effect of Free Left-Turning Vehicles on Pedestrian Safety at Signalized Intersection

Abstract

AbstractThis study aims to quantify the risk associated with these conflicts using one of many surrogate safety measures, i.e., post-encroachment time (PET). Study analysis is based on the data collected at two 4-arms signalized intersection one located in two Indian cities, one located in Vadodara, and other in Delhi. At both the locations, vehicular and pedestrians’ movement has been captured through videography, and the same has been used for data extraction. Data extraction included pedestrian volume, classified vehicle volume, speed of vehicles, speed of pedestrians, waiting time of pedestrian, lag/gap time and post-encroachment time, vehicle type, pedestrian gender, and age group. A linear regression model was prepared to estimate the total number of conflicts, and as expected, pedestrian volume was found to be positively correlated with number of conflicts. Further, conflict severity was calculated based on PET values which is a conflict proximity parameter and indicates how close vehicle and pedestrians were while interaction (conflict). Based on PET values, all conflicts have been categorized into three categories, i.e., severe, moderate, and for both the locations, it was observed that nearly 25–45% of the conflicts falls in severe category. This highlights the need of intersection/signal improvement at both locations to reduce conflict severity.KeywordsIntersectionsFree left turningPedestriansSafetyIndia