Evaluating Effectiveness of Infrastructure-Based Countermeasures for Pedestrian Safety

This paper summarizes an evaluation of the effectiveness of selected infrastructure-based countermeasures to enhance pedestrian safety. The countermeasures evaluated in this paper were high-visibility crosswalk, median refuge, Danish offset, and pedestrian channelization. The selected countermeasures were deployed at eight locations in the Las Vegas, Nevada, metropolitan area. The evaluations were based on field observations of pedestrian and driver behaviors before and after the installation of the countermeasures. The selected countermeasures were evaluated with measures of effectiveness such as pedestrians who were trapped in the street, pedestrians who looked for vehicles before they began to cross, pedestrians who looked for vehicles before they crossed the second half of the street, pedestrians who were captured (those who modified their path to use the crosswalk but did not go out of their way to do so), pedestrians who were diverted (those who had to go out of their way to use the crosswalk or changed their course of action), drivers who yielded to pedestrians, the distance at which drivers yielded or stopped before the crosswalk, and drivers who blocked the crosswalk. Results showed that a high-visibility crosswalk and a median refuge helped to improve pedestrian as well as driver behavior, whereas a Danish offset increased the proportion of diverted pedestrians. At sites with those countermeasures, the distance at which drivers stopped or yielded for pedestrians before the crosswalk increased. Results based on analysis of data at the site with pedestrian channelization were inconclusive.