Abstract
Pedestrian crossings are critical places for road accidents involving pedestrians and motor vehicles. Due to the relation between speed and injury severe the driver’s speed has a crucial impact on pedestrian safety. In Poland the traffic-related death rate of unprotected road users is extremely high comparing to other countries of European Union even though the traffic law regulations require from drivers special attention and slowing down while approaching to the intersection and/or zebra pedestrian crossing area. The goal of the paper is to investigate driver’s speed while approaching to the pedestrian crossings located in mid-block areas and in inlet sections of unsignalised intersections and roundabouts. For this purpose the spot speed measurements in free flow traffic conditions were conducted using radar speed gun. Speed was recorded at a distance of 100m and 50m from the crossing as well as at the zebra crossing location. As a result driver’s speed behaviour based on statistical analysis and depending on the type, localization and distance from the pedestrian crossing was analysed and evaluated.
Highlights
Pedestrians are highly threatened group of road users
A high percentage of pedestrian-vehicle accidents occur in the area of pedestrian crossings, places that theoretically should to provide especially high level of pedestrian’s safety [1]
In recent years the number of victims registered on pedestrian crossings in Poland has accounted to 30% of all victims but the problem is actual in a world-wide scale [2, 3, 4]
Summary
Pedestrians are highly threatened group of road users. Being deprived of effective protection during a collision with a vehicle they experience serious injuries or become victims as a result of high hit energy emerging from high speed driving. A number of studies examined the pedestrian characteristics on sidewalks or pedestrian flow characteristics at signalised intersections to develop pedestrian models for evaluation of walking facilities [7, 8] Another studies related to human’s factor have included pedestrian accidents characteristics in Europe [9, 10, 11] pointing restricted visibility, poor infrastructure, forcing the right of way, driver’s attitude and reckless driving as the grounds of accidents. According to a study conducted by the U.K. Department of Transportation [20] the probability of pedestrian death is 85% when the striking vehicle is travelling at 60km/h. Sites were selected to obtain varied road geometry conditions considering a type of a cross section
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