Ni, Ying (2010)
Pedestrian Safety at Urban Signalised Intersections.
Technische Universität Darmstadt
Dissertation, Erstveröffentlichung

Kurzbeschreibung (Abstract)

Pedestrians are considered as the weakest traffic participants, they are easily involved in traffic accidents with severe consequences, in which more than half occur at urban signalised intersections. Concerning pedestrian safety at urban areas in China, it is much worse than that in the U.S. and European countries, pedestrian fatalities in China are about 20 times higher than those in the U.S. and in Germany under the same motorisation level (the same number of private cars) in 2007. Therefore, it is necessary and urgent to find solutions to improve pedestrian safety in China. Based on previous studies, it can be concluded that pedestrian safety at signalised intersections is influenced by several clusters of factors, among which behaviour of road users has the most direct impacts. Behaviour of pedestrians and drivers is influenced by internal factors (human factors including demographic and social demographic factors, alcohol etc.) and external factors (background factors, traffic factors, intersection geometry and layout, signal control, traffic education and traffic law enforcement etc.). Pedestrian safety problems at signalised intersections in China are highlighted through a comparison of pedestrian crossing traffic in Germany and in China mainly based on empirical studies at seven typical signalised intersections in China and eight intersections in Germany. It focuses on pedestrian and driver behaviour and influencing factors on behaviour, such as intersection layout and signal control, traffic education and law enforcement. Traffic Situation Analysis (TSA) is adopted as the main method for empirical study at intersections out of two reasons: on the one hand, it provides a comprehensive view of traffic situations since complete information of “traffic situations” (e.g. behaviour, traffic conditions, intersection geometry and layout, signal control) are required to obtain; on the other hand, TSA distinguishes interactions (interactions obeying traffic rules and encounters) when pedestrians comply with signals from conflicts due to non-compliance by at least one of the traffic participants. Furthermore, different levels of interactions are distinguished according to the non-compliant behaviour and the executor of a manoeuvre. The findings of pedestrian safety problems in China can be summarised by: (1)Mixed traffic makes the situation at signalised intersections more complicated for pedestrians to handle.(2)High rates of pedestrian non-compliance and low rates of driver yielding behaviour as major problems endanger pedestrian safety.(3)Traffic planning, design, and operation followed a “vehicle-oriented” notion for a long time, which ignored pedestrian requirements and conversely easily induced improper behaviour of pedestrians and drivers.(4)Lack of traffic education is the main reason for low traffic discipline of all road users.(5)Traffic laws have some deficiencies and enforcement measures are inefficient and insufficient. Accordingly, there are two fundamental approaches to improve pedestrian safety at signalised intersections in China, one is to ensure that traffic facilities provide pedestrians with high level of service and the other is to increase road users’ compliance with traffic regulations and traffic facilities. Measures of traffic engineering, traffic education and traffic enforcement are sorted and evaluated based on experiences in the U.S., Germany and some other countries. Concerning particular situations in China, the feasibility and application methods of measures in China are drawn out with comprehensive consideration of efficiency to improve pedestrian safety, influence on the capacity of motorised traffic, and cost. Methodology such as “before-and-after comparison”, “treatment-and-control comparison” etc. was employed. The major issues of measures to improve pedestrian safety in China are:(1)Traffic education is the basic measure to cultivate a right attitude towards traffic of all road users and provide them with knowledge of safe behaviour. An enhanced school traffic education system should be attached more importance to. (2)Pedestrian-friendly facilities are required, especially at sites with high pedestrian volume or high frequency of activities of the elderly, children and handicapped pedestrians. Generally speaking, the requirement of pedestrian-friendly facilities include: reduced vehicle volume and speed, increased visibility for vehicles and pedestrians, ample space for waiting and walking, short crossing distance, signs and signals with high visibility and clear meanings, short waiting time, required minimum green time，sufficient clearance time, reduced conflicts between pedestrians and vehicles, successive crossing without stops, and special consideration for the disabled pedestrians and children. (3)Efficient traffic law enforcement is necessary to prevent non-compliance and risky behaviour. The achievements of the presented research can be summarised as follows: analysing characteristics of pedestrian and driver behaviour at signalised intersections, finding out influencing factors on pedestrian safety at signalised intersections and their functions, pointing out pedestrian safety problems in China, and providing a draft of “Guidelines for pedestrian safety at signalised intersections” for China from the aspects of traffic education, traffic law enforcement and traffic engineering, which fills a gap in China and may be also interesting for other countries with similar traffic situations(e.g. India, Vietnam etc.).

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