Illegal road crossing behavior of pedestrians at overpass locations: Factors affecting gap acceptance,crossing times and overpass use

The aim of designing overpasses is to provide safe road crossings for pedestrians by helping them to avoid conflicts with motor vehicles. However, the number of pedestrians who do not use overpasses to cross the road is very high. An observational survey of illegal road crossings was conducted at four overpass locations in Izmir, Turkey to determine the crossing time, crossing speed of the pedestrians and their distance and time gap perception for safe road-crossing within 25 m of the overpasses in both directions. Crossing time is the time needed for a pedestrian to cross a particular road. Time gap is strongly related with safety margin. If a pedestrian chooses a larger time gap, then the arrival time of the oncoming vehicle to the crossing point of the pedestrian increases thus, the possibility of a collision decreases. Each overpass was observed on weekdays during peak afternoon (12.30–13.30) and evening hours (17.00–18.00). At all overpass locations 454 illegal crossings were observed. ANOVA results revealed that age had a significant effect both on safety margin and crossing time. During the observations a survey was conducted among pedestrians who completed their crossings either using the overpass or at street level within 25 m of the overpass (n = 231). Factors affecting the crossing choice of pedestrians were specified in the surveys. The major part of the respondents (71.7%) indicated that time saving was the main reason for crossing at street level. Pedestrians’ crossing speeds were extracted from the video recordings to observe the effect of speed limit on pedestrian behavior. As a result, at locations where the speed limit was 70 km/h, pedestrians’ average crossing speed was found to be 1.60 m/s and 1.73 m/s while at locations where the speed limit was 50 km/h, pedestrians’ average crossing speed was found to be 1.04 m/s and 0.97 m/s. This shows that pedestrians feel safer while crossing when the vehicle speed is low.     

Predictors of road crossing safety in pedestrians with Parkinson's disease

Road-crossing safety is an important issue in an aging society. Information regarding the risk of crossing the street to pedestrians with Parkinson's disease (PD) is limited. To assess the risk and predictors of unsafe crossing behaviors in patients with PD, we compared 31 pedestrians with mild-to-moderate PD to 50 age/gender/education-matched controls using a battery of cognitive, visual, and motor tests. With a simulated simple street-crossing situation, we determined the remaining time and safety margin for each participant in different traffic situations, including variable motor vehicle speed, time gap, and time of the day. Odds ratios (ORs) were estimated by logistic regression models. We found that pedestrians with PD were more vulnerable to traffic accidents than controls (OR 1.61 [1.28–2.02], P = 0.01). The risk of crossing road correlated in a dose-dependent manner with the severity of PD, based on both Hoehn and Yahr (H&Y) stages and unified Parkinson's disease rating scale (UPDRS) motor scores (OR 1.13 for each increasing point of UPDSR, P < 0.01). Among PD patients, scores of clock drawing test (OR 0.8 [0.74–0.88], P < 0.01) and visual form discrimination (OR 1.14 [1.07–1.22], P < 0.01) predicted worsening of safety errors, rather than executive function. Environmental factors, such as fast approaching motor vehicle speed (OR 4.50 [2.92–6.95], P < 0.01), short time gap (OR 45.98 [27.04–78.18], P < 0.01), and time of day (OR 4.45 [3.11–6.36], P < 0.01) also affected road-crossing safety. Future large sample studies are needed to confirm our findings. Training programs or portable stimulator devices that compensate for the visual-spatial disabilities of PD patients are required to improve road safety for PD patients.     

The effect of safety climate on seafarers’ safety behaviors in container shipping

This study empirically examined safety climate and its effects on safety behaviors from seafarers’ perceptions in the container shipping context. Research hypotheses were formulated and tested using survey data collected from 608 seafarers working on 124 vessels belonging to 13 of the top 20 global container carriers. A structural equation model was used to examine the effect of safety climate dimensions, namely, safety policy, perceived supervisor safety behavior, and safety management, on safety behavior. The results revealed a positive association between safety climate and seafarers’ safety behavior. The contribution of the study findings to the development of safety climate theory and their managerial implications for vessel safety in shipping operations are discussed.     

A system dynamics approach for modeling construction workers’ safety attitudes and behaviors

Construction accidents are caused by an unsafe act (i.e., a person's behavior or activity that deviates from normal accepted safe procedure) and/or an unsafe condition (i.e., a hazard or an unsafe mechanical or physical environment). While there has been dramatic improvement in creating safer construction environments, relatively little is known regarding the elimination of construction workers’ unsafe acts. To address this deficiency, this paper aims to develop a system dynamics (SD)-based model of construction workers’ mental processes that can help analyze the feedback mechanisms and the resultant dynamics regarding the workers’ safety attitudes and safe behaviors. The developed model is applied to examine the effectiveness of three safety improvement policies: incentives for safe behaviors, and increased levels of communication and immersion in accidents. Application of the model verifies the strong potential of the developed model to provide a better understanding of how to eliminate unsafe acts, and to function as a robust test-bed to assess the effectiveness of safety programs or training sessions before their implementation.     

Evaluation of pedestrian safety at intersections: A theoretical framework based on pedestrian-vehicle interaction patterns

Pedestrians are the most vulnerable road users, and pedestrian safety has become a major research focus in recent years. Regarding the quality and quantity issues with collision data, conflict analysis using surrogate safety measures has become a useful method to study pedestrian safety. However, given the inequality between pedestrians and vehicles in encounters and the multiple interactions between pedestrians and vehicles, it is insufficient to simply use the same indicator(s) or the same way to aggregate indicators for all conditions. In addition, behavioral factors cannot be neglected.To better use information extracted from trajectories for safety evaluation and pay more attention on effects of behavioral factors, this paper develops a more sophisticated framework for pedestrian conflict analysis that takes pedestrian-vehicle interactions into consideration. A concept of three interaction patterns has been proposed for the first time, namely ⿿hard interaction,⿿ ⿿no interaction,⿿ and ⿿soft-interaction.⿿ Interactions have been categorized under one of these patterns by analyzing profiles of speed and conflict indicators during the whole interactive processes. In this paper, a support vector machine (SVM) approach has been adopted to classify severity levels for a dataset including 1144 events extracted from three intersections in Shanghai, China, followed by an analysis of variable importance. The results revealed that different conflict indicators have different contributions to indicating the severity level under various interaction patterns. Therefore, it is recommended either to use specific conflict indicators or to use weighted indicator aggregation for each interaction pattern when evaluating pedestrian safety.The implementation has been carried out at the fourth crosswalk, and the results indicate that the proposed method can achieve a higher accuracy and better robustness than conventional methods. Furthermore, the method is helpful for better understanding underlying levels of safety from the behavioral perspective, which can also provide evidence for targeted traffic education on proper behaviors.     

Child pedestrian safety: Parental supervision, modeling behaviors, and beliefs about child pedestrian competence

Pedestrian injuries are a significant health risk to children, particularly those 5–9 years of age. Surprisingly, few studies have explored parent-related factors that may moderate this risk. The present study used naturalistic observations of parent–child pairs crossing at uncontrolled intersections and a short interview to examine parental supervision of children during crossings, modeling of safe-crossing behaviors, beliefs about how children come to cross streets safely, and whether child attributes (age, sex) relate to parental practices and beliefs. Results revealed that parents more closely supervised younger than older children, they modeled safer crossing practices for sons more than daughters, particularly younger sons, and although over half the sample believed children need to be explicitly taught how to cross safely, few actually provided any instruction when crossing with their children. Providing parents both with guidelines for how to accurately appraise their child's readiness for crossing independently and with information about best practices for teaching children how to cross safely may facilitate parents’ implementing these practices, particularly if this is coupled with public advocacy highlighting the important role they could play to reduce the risk of child pedestrian injury.     

Gender differences in pedestrian rule compliance and visual search at signalized and unsignalized crossroads

Male pedestrians are over-represented in road crashes. Among pedestrians, males violate more rules than females do. For now, it is not known whether gender differences in pedestrian behaviors only concern rule compliance. The objective of this study was to explore gender differences in pedestrian rule compliance and in gaze targets before and during crossing. 400 adult pedestrians were observed at two signalized and two unsignalized crossroads, using a taxonomic observation grid which detailed 13 behavioral categories before, during and after crossing. The results show that the temporal crossing compliance rate is lower among male pedestrians but spatial crossing compliance does not differ between genders. Furthermore, different gaze patterns emerge between genders before and during crossing, notably as women particularly focus on other pedestrians during these two periods whereas men focus on vehicles. Moreover, females’ gazes vary with the type of crossroads, but males’ gazes do not. Spatial crossing compliance and gaze targets are furthermore modulated by the crossroad configuration. These results are discussed in terms of pedestrian visual strategy and compliance.     

Numerical simulation of stress and deformation in a railway crossing

Stress/strain analysis is the key to understanding and predicting wear and fatigue behavior of a crossing. By taking into account non-linear material properties, a three dimensional elastic–plastic finite element model, which is composed of wheel, crossing and ties, is presented for the simulation of stress/deformation in a railway crossing. The influences of dynamic wheel load and wheel–crossing contact are examined. Stress, plastic strain and vertical displacement of the simulated crossing under dynamic wheel load at different wheel–crossing contact positions are investigated. The maximum vertical displacement occurs at the wheel–crossing contact region, and decreases gradually from the wheel–crossing contact region to the toe-end and heel-end of the crossing. The maximum von Mises stress and maximum equivalent plastic strain in the crossing increase remarkably with the increase of the train speed. The maximum vertical displacement in the crossing increases obviously and varies linear approximately with the train speed. The maximum von Mises stress, maximum vertical displacement and maximum equivalent plastic strain in the crossing are very sensitive to the axle load and are linear approximately with the axle load.     

Pedestrian behavior and safety on a two-stage crossing with a center refuge island and the effect of winter weather on pedestrian compliance rate

Despite a burgeoning research effort directed at understanding the effects of age, gender, disability, group size, traffic control condition and street width on pedestrian safety and compliance rate as they cross a signalized intersection, remarkably little is known about the compliance rate at a signal controlled two-stage crossing and how pedestrians react to different weather conditions. The purpose of this study was to determine whether pedestrian behavior becomes more risky in inclement weather through the investigation of street crossing behavior and compliance under different weather and road surface conditions at a busy two-stage crossing. Road crossing behavior was filmed at one eight-lane divided road strip at a downtown site in Toronto metropolitan area. The intersection was filmed unobtrusively from a rooftop by one camera set to record both oncoming near-side traffic and pedestrian movements. Pedestrian behavior and compliance rate were scored for a number of determinants of safe road crossing actions. Overall, the results show that road crossing behavior in inclement weather conditions was less safe than in fine weather. The designs of signal timing and configuration of the center refuge island also adversely influenced pedestrian behavior at this crossing, and adverse weather conditions further exacerbated the noncompliance rate. This paper presents new information on compliance rate at a two-stage crossing that emphasizes the need to consider the influence of traffic signal design and weather conditions on pedestrians’ behavior. More studies are needed to develop traffic control techniques to allow pedestrians to cross wide two-stage crossings in safety.     

Landscaping of highway medians and roadway safety at unsignalized intersections

Well-planted and maintained landscaping can help reduce driving stress, provide better visual quality, and decrease over speeding, thus improving roadway safety. Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) Standard Index (SI-546) is one of the more demanding standards in the U.S. for landscaping design criteria at highway medians near intersections. The purposes of this study were to (1) empirically evaluate the safety results of SI-546 at unsignalized intersections and (2) quantify the impacts of geometrics, traffic, and landscaping design features on total crashes and injury plus fatal crashes. The studied unsignalized intersections were divided into (1) those without median trees near intersections, (2) those with median trees near intersections that were compliant with SI-546, and (3) those with median trees near intersections that were non-compliant with SI-546. A total of 72 intersections were selected, for which five-year crash data from 2006–2010 were collected.The sites that were compliant with SI-546 showed the best safety performance in terms of the lowest crash counts and crash rates. Four crash predictive models—two for total crashes and two for injury crashes—were developed. The results indicated that improperly planted and maintained median trees near highway intersections can increase the total number of crashes and injury plus fatal crashes at a 90% confidence level; no significant difference could be found in crash rates between sites that were compliant with SI-546 and sites without trees. All other conditions remaining the same, an intersection with trees that was not compliant with SI-546 had 63% more crashes and almost doubled injury plus fatal crashes than those at intersections without trees. The study indicates that appropriate landscaping in highway medians near intersections can be an engineering technology that not only improves roadway environmental quality but also maintains intersection safety.     

An accelerated failure time model for investigating pedestrian crossing behavior and waiting times at signalized intersections

The waiting process is crucial to pedestrians in the street-crossing behavior. Once pedestrians terminate their waiting behavior during the red light period, they would cross against the red light and put themselves in danger. A joint hazard-based duration model is developed to investigate the effect of various covariates on pedestrian crossing behavior and to estimate pedestrian waiting times at signalized intersections. A total of 1181 pedestrians approaching the intersections during red light periods were observed in Beijing, China. Pedestrian crossing behaviors are classified into immediate crossing behavior and waiting behavior. The probability and effect of various covariates for pedestrians’ immediate crossing behavior are identified by a logit model. Four accelerated failure time duration models based on the exponential, Weibull, lognormal and log-logistic distributions are proposed to examine the significant risk factors affecting duration times for pedestrians’ waiting behavior. A joint duration model is developed to estimate pedestrian waiting times. Moreover, unobserved heterogeneity is considered in the proposed model. The results indicate that the Weibull AFT model with shared frailty is appropriate for modelling pedestrian waiting durations. Failure to account for heterogeneity would significantly underestimate the effects of covariates on waiting duration times. The proposed model provides a better understanding of pedestrian crossing behavior and more accurate estimation of pedestrian waiting times. It may be applicable in traffic system analysis in developing countries with high flow of mixed traffic.     

A cellular automaton simulation model for pedestrian and vehicle interaction behaviors at unsignalized mid-block crosswalks

At unsignalized crosswalks, interactions between pedestrians and vehicles often lead to traffic safety hazards due to absence of traffic control and unclear right-of-ways. To address this safety problem, there is a need to understand the interaction behaviors of pedestrians and vehicles that are complicated by a variety of traffic and roadway attributes. The prime objective of this study is to establish a reliable simulation model to represent the vehicle yielding and pedestrian crossing behaviors at unsignalized crosswalks in a realistic way. The model is calibrated with detailed behavioral data collected and extracted from field observations. The capability of the calibrated model in predicting the pedestrian-interaction events as well as estimating the driver yielding rate and pedestrian delay are also tested and demonstrated. Meanwhile, the traffic dynamics in the vicinity of the crosswalk can be meaningfully represented with simulation results based on the model. Moreover, with the definitions of the vehicle-pedestrian conflicts, the proposed model is capable to evaluate the pedestrian safety. Thereby, the simulation model has the potential to serve as a useful tool for assessing safety performance and traffic operations at existing facilities. Furthermore, the model can enable the evaluation of policy effectiveness and the selection of engineering treatments at unsignalized crosswalks to improve safety and efficiency of pedestrian crossing.     

Macro-level safety analysis of pedestrian crashes in Shanghai,China

Pedestrian safety has become one of the most important issues in the field of traffic safety. This study aims at investigating the association between pedestrian crash frequency and various predictor variables including roadway, socio-economic, and land-use features. The relationships were modeled using the data from 263 Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs) within the urban area of Shanghai – the largest city in China. Since spatial correlation exists among the zonal-level data, Bayesian Conditional Autoregressive (CAR) models with seven different spatial weight features (i.e. (a) 0–1 first order, adjacency-based, (b) common boundary-length-based, (c) geometric centroid-distance-based, (d) crash-weighted centroid-distance-based, (e) land use type, adjacency-based, (f) land use intensity, adjacency-based, and (g) geometric centroid-distance-order) were developed to characterize the spatial correlations among TAZs. Model results indicated that the geometric centroid-distance-order spatial weight feature, which was introduced in macro-level safety analysis for the first time, outperformed all the other spatial weight features. Population was used as the surrogate for pedestrian exposure, and had a positive effect on pedestrian crashes. Other significant factors included length of major arterials, length of minor arterials, road density, average intersection spacing, percentage of 3-legged intersections, and area of TAZ. Pedestrian crashes were higher in TAZs with medium land use intensity than in TAZs with low and high land use intensity. Thus, higher priority should be given to TAZs with medium land use intensity to improve pedestrian safety. Overall, these findings can help transportation planners and managers understand the characteristics of pedestrian crashes and improve pedestrian safety.     

The safety climate and its relationship to safety practices, safety of the work environment and occupational accidents in eight wood-processing companies

Employees continuously observe their work environment and the actions of their fellow workers and superiors, and they use such observations as a basis for the creation of cognitive models associated with safety. These models regulate their actions in the workplace and thus have an influence on safety. This study attempts to define the structure of the safety climate as perceived by workers and the correlations between the safety climate, on the one hand, and the safety practices of the company, the safety level of the work environment and occupational accidents on the other. The variables used in this study were the same as those employed in two previous Finnish safety climate studies carried out in the plywood industry, shipyards, the forestry industry, building construction and stevedoring. The safety climate was measured by means of a questionnaire. Workers from four sawmills, two plywood factories and two parquet plants participated. The total number of participants was 508 in 1990 and 548 in 1993. The variables formed four factors, whose contents and reliabilities closely resembled the results obtained in the earlier studies. These results indicate that the structure of the safety climate among Finnish workers is quite stable. The safety climate correlated both with the safety level of the work environment and with the safety practices of the company, but the correlation between the safety climate and the safety of the work environment was stronger. This result differs from those of the previous studies, in which the safety climate was defined specifically in terms of an individual’s perceptions of the safety practices of the company and of the behavior of other employees. The two safety climate factors that described a company’s attitudes to safety and its safety precautions correlated with the accident rates. The better the safety climate of the company was, the lower was the accident rate. Four companies with an accident rate below the average for the wood-processing industry had a better safety climate than four similar companies with an accident rate above the average.     

Red light violations by adult pedestrians and other safety-related behaviors at signalized crosswalks

To study human factors linked to red light violations, and more generally to safety-related behaviors at signalized crosswalks, the present study combines the collection of observational data with questionnaires answered by 422 French adult pedestrians. Thirteen behavioral indicators were extracted (12 before and while crossing, and red light violation), and the roles of several demographical, contextual and mobility-associated variables were examined. The results of the stepwise logistic regression analyses carried out on each of the 12 behavioral indicators observed before and while crossing revealed that gender had no major impact, but age did, with more cautious behaviors as pedestrians were older. The three contextual variables (group size, parked vehicles, and traffic density), as four mobility-associated variables (driving and walking experiences, self-reported crossing difficulties and falls in the street) were also found to be important factors in safety-related crossing behaviors. A wider logistic regression analysis, made specifically on red light violations with all behavioral indicators observed before and while crossings and the several demographical, contextual and mobility-associated variables put together, showed that red light violations were mostly affected by current situational factors (group size, parked vehicles) and particularly associated with some behavioral patterns (looking toward the traffic, the ground, the light, running and crossing diagonally). The overall results encourage the development of safer pedestrian infrastructures and engineering countermeasures.     

Analysis of factors influencing safety management for metro construction in China

With the rapid development of urbanization in China, the number and size of metro construction projects are increasing quickly. At the same time, and increasing number of accidents in metro construction make it a disturbing focus of social attention. In order to improve safety management in metro construction, an investigation of the participants’ perspectives on safety factors in China metro construction has been conducted to identify the key safety factors, and their ranking consistency among the main participants, including clients, consultants, designers, contractors and supervisors. The result of factor analysis indicates that there are five key factors which influence the safety of metro construction including safety attitude, construction site safety, government supervision, market restrictions and task unpredictability. In addition, ANOVA and Spearman rank correlation coefficients were performed to test the consistency of the means rating and the ranking of safety factors. The results indicated that the main participants have significant disagreement about the importance of safety factors on more than half of the items. Suggestions and recommendations on practical countermeasures to improve metro construction safety management in China are proposed.     

Safety climate and safety behavior in the passenger ferry context

This research empirically evaluates safety climate and safety behavior in the passenger ferry context. Using survey data collected from 155 respondents working for passenger ferry companies in Taiwan, hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the effects of safety climate on self-reported safety behaviors. Confirmatory factor analysis identified five main dimensions of safety climate as measured on a passenger ferry safety climate scale: safety policy, safety motivation, emergency preparedness, safety training, and safety communication. Further, safety training and emergency preparedness were found to positively affect self-reported safety behaviors with respect to safety compliance and safety participation. The study also revealed positive associations among respondents’ age, ferry capacity, and safety compliance. Implications of the study findings for increasing safety in ferry operations and their contribution to the development of safety management are discussed.     

岩巷爆破振动信号的HHT分析与应用

为优化爆破参数,减少对围岩的损伤,以煤矿玄武岩双巷道楔形深孔掏槽爆破的实测爆破振动信号为例,分析对比传统傅里叶变换、小波变换、HHT变换三种变换方法,对爆破地震波信号的时频特性和能量分布特征分析。结果表明:HHT变换能够确保信号被分解后的非平稳性,且自动适应能力较强,分解效率较高。通过HHT变换得到三维图直观展示各分量随时间、频率和能量的分布情况。爆破振动能量主要分布在0.3s~1.0s时间段和0~400Hz频率段内,频带100Hz~250Hz中爆破振动分量对应的频带能量达到最大。通过分析对比爆破振动信号,得到巷道帮部、底部爆破振动信号的主振方向分别为Y(切向)和Z(垂向)方向。     

Dog safety in rural China: Children's sources of safety information and effect on knowledge,attitudes, and practices

Dog bites are a significant pediatric public health challenge in rural China. This study evaluated the effect of various sources of dog-safety information on children's knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and practices with dogs. A total of 1925 children (grade 3–6) between 6 and 15 years old in four rural regions across China participated between May and September 2012. Results showed that teachers and especially parents were effective information sources for children to learn about dog safety. Learning from peers and children teaching themselves were ineffective education strategies. Multi-source learning (from both parents and teachers) did not differ from single-source learning (from parents but not teachers) but did exceed learning from teachers but not parents or no learning from adults. Older age was associated with greater safety knowledge but also riskier practices with dogs. Girls generally held more safety knowledge, less risky attitudes/beliefs and safer practices than boys. Neither age nor gender interacted with information sources on outcome measures. In conclusion, parents appear to play a major role in educating children in rural China on dog safety. Future dog safety interventions might focus on changing cognition and behavior as well as delivering basic knowledge to youth through teachers and especially parents.