Interactions Between Drivers and Pedestrians: Some New Approaches to Pedestrian Safety

Abstract

Recent studies, in Nottingham England, of pedestrian and driver behavior, have shown that drivers leave most of the responsibility for avoiding accidents to the pedestrian, even when the pedestrian is a child in a residential area or near a school, or both, where most child pedestrian accidents occur. The evidence for this is of two types. The first is based on subjective obsevations of driver and pedestrian behavior, which show that drivers never take observable avoiding action until the pedestrian is closer than the stopping distance of the car, ie. until it is too late. In contrast, even child pedestrians show much greater anticipation of danger. The second is based on objective measures of the speed of vehicles outside school entrances. Radar speed measurements show no reduction in the speed of vehicles when children are waiting to cross the road. Nor is there any increase in the distance of the vehicles from the curb when a child is standing there.

These observations are in flat contradiction to the retrospective evidence given when accidents have occurred. Overwhelmingly, child pedestrian accidents are attributed to the irresponsibility or thought-lessness of the children by the accident investigators, and by the courts. Our evidence suggests that this evidence is biased and misleading and that pedestrian safety could be most effectively increased by measures aimed at increasing the responsibility of drivers for avoiding these accidents.

In particular, it is suggested that in residential roads legal measures should be used to force drivers to accept responsibility, and that corresponding engineering and educational measures should be undertaken to emphasise the difference between residential roads and other roads.