Junctions pedestrians

On built-up roads around 60 000 injury accidents occur away from junctions each year. Pedestrians are involved in 44% of these accidents. There are more pedestrian accidents where pedestrians cross from the drivers nearside than from the offside. Motorcyclists are involved in 17% of accidents, public service vehicles 10% and pedal cycles 8%. 

On average there are more accidents at urban T-junctions with a pedestrian crossing than at those without, for given vehicle and pedestrian flows. 

More traffic lanes increase rear-shunt and lane-changing accidents on the major left arm of the junction, and also increase pedestrian accidents. 

Traffic signal junctions are more prevalent in urban than in rural situations. Right turning accidents and accidents involving pedestrians are particular safety concerns. 

The presence of a pedestrian stage at the junction did not contribute to a reduction in pedestrian (or vehicle) accidents. 

Overall, there was no clear evidence of a difference in pedestrian casualty risk at stand-alone crossings and signal-controlled junctions. 

The severity ratio, particularly at the junction crossings, reinforced the view that there is potential danger to pedestrians from faster-moving vehicles. 

No blackout periods at junctions and flashing green man at pelicans should remove sources of pedestrian confusion, and result in greater consistency throughout the country. 

The wider use of pedestrian stages at signal-controlled junctions should increase pedestrian convenience and reduce pedestrian—vehicle conflicts. 

TRL Report 510 Accidents at junctions on one-way urban roads, 2001 For all junction types, there was no evidence that the presence of pedestrian guardrail was associated with fewer pedestrian accidents. 

Parking reduces speeds on links and junctions by 2-5 mph. The effect on safety is unclear - reduced speeds increase safety but parked vehicles can obscure pedestrians. 

Traffic islands would be of particular help to elderly pedestrians, particularly at bus stops and junctions. 

I street lighting unchanged after new junction introduced I lack of pedestrian crossing facilities on approaches ... 

A design may be inherently safer for one particular hazard while not being inherently safer for another hazard. For example, speed breakers are built near road crossings or near road junctions so that drivers slow down when seeing one this helps pedestrians cross... 

Traffic flow behaviour can be regarded as a combination of road user behaviours of a group of road users using the same part of the transport system at the same time for example, a road section, junction, bicycle path section, or pedestrian crossing. Thereby, forms of traffic flow behaviour measured by road section or cross-section speed, headway, time to collision, time to line crossing and other indicators (average, variance, other parameters of distribution, etc.) are often addressed in studies on behavioural adaptation. 

In all databases, including the CARE database, it was foimd that accidents were most likely to occm when the pedestrian was crossing the road remotely from a junction (Figure 16.1). 

Figure 16.1. Critical pedestrian scenarios crossing the street remotely from a junction...

Requirement (3) The junctions under study were chosen according to comparable construction and urban characteristics. Hazard potential was accounted for by registering encounters between vehicles/vehicles and pedestrians. The correlation coefficients of accidents are shown in Tab. 5.13. 

The major focus of the scheme was to remove traffic signals at the junction of London Road/Park Lane/Chester Road, which was primarily designed to cater for motorised vehicles. There was a staggered controlled pedestrian crossing on the northern arm of the junction, but other pedestrian crossing points were uncontrolled. There were no dedicated facilities for cyclists at the junction. 

As part of the proposals, aU traffic signal equipment and other street furniture (e.g. pedestrian guardrail and bollards) was removed, and an open priority system introduced with an informal roundabout gyratory system at the Chester Road junction. 

Some of the schemes that have already been implemented have been monitored, and the collision monitoring can help Road Safety Auditors to have confidence that the schemes are not causing road safety problems. One example of this monitoring is the scheme in Ashford in Kent where there have been modifications to the ring road and a shared space scheme at one of the junctions. Here, collision monitoring showed that in the 3-year period since implementation the overall number of collisions was reduced by over 40%, and in the shared space section by 50%. Pedestrian casualties were reduced by even larger proportions, although there was a small increase in the number of cyclist collisions. 

In the example in Figure 10.4, a set of traffic signals has been removed and replaced with an uncontrolled and unmarked junction. Speeds have been reduced by the scheme, and initial collision analysis for the after period is encouraging. While there are some concerns for the safety of pedestrians with visual impairment, other road users are coping well with this road environment. 

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