Pedestrian Safety

There are many industrial injury reports that identify some of the more serious injuries and incidents that occur to pedestrians. One specific study on narrow-aisle lift trucks cited the following brief list of significant incidents involving pedestrians  

The list of incidents to pedestrians from other studies would be quite similar to this study of narrow-aisle trucks. 

Some of these claims involve lawsuits in addition to the workers compensation issue. 

Pedestrian injuries occur as a result of being involved in incidents from a variety of pieces of equipment. Counterbalanced forklifts, narrow-aisle units, powered pallet trucks, stock-chasers, and order-pickers all play their parts in contributing to pedestrian injury. The individual can be struck by the counterweight, the forks, a falling load from the vehicle, loads which were knocked off racking or knocked over, and moving loads. 

There is much that can be done to reduce and eliminate injuries to pedestrians however, many basic principles must first be understood by equipment operators. Basic operating principles involving the lift truck must be pointed out to the forklift operators, supervisors, and all other employees. Note the following issues that involve lift truck movement. 

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In Long Beach, California, some of the concrete pavements are being replaced by recycled rubber. They have several advantages over the concrete they are replacing, including greater pedestrian safety and easier maintenance [38]. 

Pressure-relief groove is excavated on the floor near the side of coal pillar. (Sun, J. Wang, L.G. 2011). Considering the convenience for transportation and pedestrian safety, the groove width is 300 mm. The Figure 4 shows stress distribution and displacement characteristics of floor strata at different depths of the grooves, such as 0.2 m, 0.3 m, 0.5 m, 0.7 m, 1.0 m, 1.3 m, 1.5 m. 

The minimum requirements for vehicle-based pedestrian protection necessary for vehicle type approval ( homologation ) are defined by laws, e.g., the Regulation (EC) No. 78 009 of the European Parliament and of the Council [37] or the Global technical regulation No. 9 on Pedestrian Safety by the United Nations [38]. Additional requirements are defined by consumer protection agencies like the European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) [39]. 

United Nations. (2(X)9). Global Technical Rule No. 9—Pedestrian Safety. No. ECE/TRANS/ 180/Add.9. United Nations. 

Vehicle Related Pedestrian Safety Index (VERPS)... 

One example of a component-based testing method is the Vehicle Related Pedestrian Safety Index (VERPS) [73, 74]. This index utilizes a linear scale for both active and passive safety measures. The pedestrian head impact in frontal passenger vehicle collisions is assessed using the Head Injury Criterion (HIC) as metric. The method delivers specific results for a given vehicle and pedestrian combination. The evaluation process includes accident data analysis for relevant scenarios, kinematic analysis (via multi-body simulation), hardware component testing, and a procedure to obtain the VERPS index [73, 74]. The VERPS index takes only the probability for AIS3+ head injuries due to impact on the vehicle into account, since this probability can be derived from the HIC measurement. 

Liers, H., Hannawald, L. (2009). Benefit estimation of the EuroNCAP pedestrian rating concerning real-world pedestrian safety. Verkehrsunfallforschung an der TU Dresden GmbH. 

Ebner, A., Samaha, R. R., Scullion, R, Helmer, T. (2010). Methodology forthe development and evaluation of active safety systems using reference scenarios Application to preventive pedestrian safety. In Proceedings of the International Research Council on Biomechanics of Injury (IRCOBI) (pp. 155-168). 

Snyder, M. B., Knoblauch, R. L. (1971). Pedestrian safety The identification precipitating factors and possible countermeasures. Final Report DOT-HS-800-403. Washington Departmant of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 

Ebner, A., Helmer, T., Samaha, R. R., and Scullion, P. Identifying and Analyzing Reference Scenarios for the Development and Evaluation of Active Safety Application to Preventive Pedestrian Safety. International Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems Research 9, 3 (2011), 128-138... 

Gandhi T, Manubhai Trivedi M (2(K)8) Computer vision and machine learning for enhancing pedestrian safety. In Prokhorov D (ed) Computational intelligence in automotive applications. Springer, Berlin... 

Should the school train or educate children on pedestrian safety What if the school is in an urban setting and many children walk to school ... 

Safe Kids USA. (2011). Pedestrian safety fact sheet. Accessed April 30, 2012. http //www. safekids.org/our-work/research/fact-sheets/pedestrian-safety-fact-sheet.html. 

Pedestrian Road Safety Audit Guidelines and Prompt Lists http //drusilla.hsrc.unc.edu/ cms/downloads/PedRSA.reduced.pdf (accessed August 18, 2010). U.S. Federal Highway Administration. Outlines basic concepts used in conducting pedestrian road safety audits. The guidelines provide detailed descriptions of potential pedestrian safety issues. 

Technical Guide for Conducting Pedestrian Safety Assessments in California http //www. techtransfer.berkeley.edu/tse/psa handbook.pdf (accessed September 3, 2010). University of California, Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies, Technology Transfer Program. Provides detailed information on conducting assessments of pedestrian safety and accessibility at existing or future roadways and facilities. 

How to Develop a Pedestrian Safety Action Plan http //safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped bike/ ped focus/docs/fhwasa0512.pdf (accessed September 3, 2010). U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration. Serves as a reference for pedestrian safety design through safety treatments such as street redesign and countermeasures. 

Work place accesses, signalization and circulation, in which it must be inserted the plan of access (visitors), signaling plan, circulation plan and pedestrian safety plan (case interferes with public streets) ... 

Routledge, D. A., R. Repetto-Wright and C. I. Howarth (1976). The development of road crossing skill by child pedestrians. Proceedings of the International Conference on Pedestrian Safety. Michlol, Haifa, Israel. 

Pasanen, E. and H. Salmivaara (1993). Driving Speeds and Pedestrian Safety in the City of Helsinki. Traffic Engineering and Control, 34(6), 308-310. 

This chapter first looks at the crash risk of pedestrians and bicyclists. Because, in most countries, pedestrians pose a much greater safety problem than bicyclists, and because bicyclists have some unique characteristics, the remainder of this chapter focuses on pedestrian safety issues including the characteristics of pedestrian crashes, the causes of these crashes in... 

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