This study establishes pedestrian safety focused environment around elementary schools. In order to reach this objective 3 consecutive goals are fulfilled / firstly / proposing, a newly designed black spot analysis, &ldquo / Behavioral Black Spot Analysis&rdquo / , secondly / documenting pedestrian behavior around black spots, and finally stimulating effective interventions around elementary schools. This study proposes a newly designed methodology / &ldquo / Behavioral Black Spot Analysis&rdquo / which is namely based upon pedestrians&rsquo / route choice and risk perception statements. Additionally it is observed that students choose the shortest route on their way. &ldquo / Behavioral Black Spot Analysis&rdquo / reveals that traffic flows, pedestrian visibility, vehicle visibility, waiting time, road width are most important parameters of pedestrians&rsquo / perception of traffic safety. Results of unobtrusive observations indicate that interventions have significant effect on vehicle speed, number of conflicts, yielding behavior of drivers, total number of cars forming a queue, number of pedestrians stopping on the curb, head movements, crossing angles, crossing tempos, and crossing distances of pedestrians. Behind this interventions affects pedestrians&rsquo / waiting time in negative manner. Recommendations for pedestrian safety interventions are suggested.

<p>Child pedestrian safety is one of the biggest safety issues regarding planning of a well arranged urban traffic. The fact that vulnerable road users suffer most from traffic incidents also raises concern for children. Children need special care while considering traffic safety. The factors are various that they differ from adults by many aspects. For their physically smaller size, immature ability to judge the traffic situations, lack of experience about traffic and mental deficiencies like losing concentration after short periods, they are much more susceptible to the traffic hazards than adults. Various studies have been carried and many applications regarding child and school pedestrian safety worldwide and the most hazardous periods were found as afternoon hours. Age factor generally is flexible but as the child grows older, mobility increases and risks become larger. The risk factors also include the social and economical environment that children living in good life standards suffer less than those are not. Education is also crucial on adopting the sense of road safety on children’s perspective. Simulation based studies have proved to be effective in order to draw child’s attention to the subject, however it should be combined with field trips to gain a more realistic and solid idea about the matter. Besides, engineering measures rise up as another milestone where roadside and land use planning is important. Traffic calming measures have proved to be effective to warn road users and thus form a safer traffic environment for children. Special applications for school zones such as flashing lights, narrowed crossways or 30km/h areas have been effective. The case study concerns the evaluation of child pedestrian safety in the vicinities of various accidents previously happened in Norrköping. Two methods were used to examine the degree of safety for the places of incidents. For locations near an intersection, road safety audit and traffic conflicts technique were applied, while, for the incident points along streets, only road safety audit technique was used. It is stated that, because of the multivariable aspect of the problem, collective application of various safety evaluation solutions would give better idea on the risk of the location and possible improvements for the future.</p>

This study assesses the role of crossing locations and light conditions in pedestrian injury severity through a multivariate regression analysis to control for many other factors that also may influence pedestrian injury severity. Crossing locations include midblock and intersections, and light conditions include daylight, dark with street lighting, and dark without street lighting. The study formulates a theoretical framework on the determinants of pedestrian injury severity, and specifies an empirical model accordingly. An ordered probit model is then applied to the KABCO severity scale of pedestrian injuries which occurred while attempting street crossing in the years 1986 to 2003 in Florida. In terms of crossing locations, the probability of a pedestrian dying when struck by a vehicle, is higher at midblock locations than at intersections for any light condition. In fact, the odds of sustaining a fatal injury is 49 percent lower at intersections than at midblock locations under daylight conditions, 24 percent lower under dark with street lighting conditions, and 5 percent lower under dark without street lighting conditions. Relative to dark conditions without street lighting, daylight reduces the odds of a fatal injury by 75 percent at midblock locations and by 83 percent at intersections, while street lighting reduces the odds by 42 percent at midblock locations and by 54 percent at intersections.

abstract: Walking and bicycling bring many merits to people, both physically and mentally. However, not everyone has an opportunity to enjoy healthy and safe bicycling and walking. Many studies suggested that access to healthy walking and bicycling is heavily related to socio-economic status. Low income population and racial minorities have poorer transportation that results in less walking and bicycling, as well as less access to public transportation. They are also under higher risks of being hit by vehicles while walking and bicycling. This research quantifies the relationship between socioeconomic factors and bicyclist and pedestrian involved traffic crash rates in order to establish an understanding of how equitable access to safe bicycling and walking is in Phoenix. The crash rates involving both bicyclists and pedestrians were categorized into two groups, minor crashes and severe crashes. Then, the OLS model was used to analyze minor and severe bicycle crash rates, and minor and severe pedestrian crash rates, respectively. There are four main results, (1) The median income of an area is always negatively related to the crash rates of bicyclists and pedestrians. The reason behind the negative correlation is that there is a very small proportion of people choosing to walk or ride bicycles as their commuting methods in the high-income areas. Consequently, there are low crash rates of pedestrians and bicyclists. (2) The minor bicycle crash rates are more related to socio-economic determinants than the severe crash rates. (3) A higher population density reduces both the minor and the severe crash rates of bicyclists and pedestrians in Phoenix. (4) A higher pedestrian commuting ratio does not reduce bicyclist and pedestrian crash rates in Phoenix. The findings from this study can provide a reference value for the government and other researchers and encourage better future decisions from policy makers. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Geography 2020

My thesis is engaged in increasing safety of pedestrians in urban traffic. My work analyses cases of accidents in a specific area and attitudes and experiences of pedestrians as well as local inhabitants. The aim of my work is to map an accident rate – a case study and formation of applicable measures in the town Třeboň, thus in an urban area. The first part of my work is engaged in theory, which is divided in used proper terminology in accordance with the law followed by a universal view of issues of traffic and their safety. The empirical part of my work then examines analysis of dangerous places in a selected locality. These places were chosen on the base on a questionnaire survey among local residents with the goal to point out these dangerous places by actual traffic accidents in the town Třeboň. It is necessary to determine applicable measures in dangerous places from particular traffic accidents and thus to help increasing safety of pedestrians in a given place. Because of acquisition of necessary data, analysis of documents, a questionnaire survey and subsequent evaluation of results is used in my work. In conclusion I evaluated results and created a draft measure.

Radar plays a major role in safety-critical applications mainly in the automotive industry due to its weather and lighting independence. The progress made in radar hardware technology has made it possible to detect objects more efficiently. Autonomous vehicles need to address a lot of problems encountered in their pathways which need proper detection and identification of obstacles for navigation purposes. Detection and identification of obstacles during navigation help in defining the trajectories for a vehicle so that collision can be avoided. A 77GHz radar system is used in many automotive industrial vehicles for automotive safety. At any given time, there is a possibility of multiple objects being in the vicinity of a vehicle that is not highly reflective which is based on its materialistic properties, such as prams or bicycles as compared to other road vehicles. In the work described in this thesis, we aim at designing, detecting, and identifying simple radar reflectors using copper sheets, which can be placed on such low reflective objects which helps in increasing pedestrian safety aspects. The software aspect of the radar module being used is achieved by using a demo application provided by the radar module manufacturer. This acts as the base structure for the python script which is used for detection and identification of the radar reflectors.

Child pedestrian safety is one of the biggest safety issues regarding planning of a well arranged urban traffic. The fact that vulnerable road users suffer most from traffic incidents also raises concern for children. Children need special care while considering traffic safety. The factors are various that they differ from adults by many aspects. For their physically smaller size, immature ability to judge the traffic situations, lack of experience about traffic and mental deficiencies like losing concentration after short periods, they are much more susceptible to the traffic hazards than adults. Various studies have been carried and many applications regarding child and school pedestrian safety worldwide and the most hazardous periods were found as afternoon hours. Age factor generally is flexible but as the child grows older, mobility increases and risks become larger. The risk factors also include the social and economical environment that children living in good life standards suffer less than those are not. Education is also crucial on adopting the sense of road safety on children’s perspective. Simulation based studies have proved to be effective in order to draw child’s attention to the subject, however it should be combined with field trips to gain a more realistic and solid idea about the matter. Besides, engineering measures rise up as another milestone where roadside and land use planning is important. Traffic calming measures have proved to be effective to warn road users and thus form a safer traffic environment for children. Special applications for school zones such as flashing lights, narrowed crossways or 30km/h areas have been effective. The case study concerns the evaluation of child pedestrian safety in the vicinities of various accidents previously happened in Norrköping. Two methods were used to examine the degree of safety for the places of incidents. For locations near an intersection, road safety audit and traffic conflicts technique were applied, while, for the incident points along streets, only road safety audit technique was used. It is stated that, because of the multivariable aspect of the problem, collective application of various safety evaluation solutions would give better idea on the risk of the location and possible improvements for the future.

Yes / The paper presents a multidisciplinary design optimisation strategy for car front-end profile to minimise head injury criteria across pedestrian groups. A hybrid modelling strategy was used to simulate the car-pedestrian impact events, combining parametric modelling of front-car geometry with pedestrian models for the kinematics of crash impact. A space filling response surface modelling strategy was deployed to study the head injury response, with Optimal Latin Hypercube (OLH) Design of Experiments sampling and Kriging technique to fit response models. The study argues that the optimisation of the front-end car geometry for each of the individual pedestrian models, using evolutionary optimisation algorithms is not an effective global optimization strategy as the solutions are not acceptable for other pedestrian groups. Collaborative Optimisation (CO) multidisciplinary design optimisation architecture is introduced instead as a global optimisation strategy, and proven that it can enable simultaneous minimisation of head injury levels for all the pedestrian groups, delivering a global optimum solution which meets the safety requirements across the pedestrian groups.

This dissertation has contributed to the pedestrian safety literature by assessing and comparing safety benefits and traffic efficiency among midblock Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon (RRFB) and Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon (PHB) sites. Video trajectory data were used to calculate pedestrian Surrogate Safety Measures (SSMs) and vehicles' delay. Regression models of SSMs and vehicles' delay revealed that PHB sites offer more safety benefits, at the expense of increased vehicles' delay, compared to RRFB sites. The presence of the PHB, weekday, signal activation, lane count, pedestrian speed, vehicle speed, land use mix, traffic flow, time of day, and pedestrian starting position from the sidewalk have been found to be significant determinants of the SSMs and vehicles' delay. Another avenue of pedestrian safety explored in this dissertation is the lag time. The study investigates survival likelihood and the lag time of non-instant pedestrian fatalities using random parameter Binary Logit and Ordered Logit models. The models were run on a dataset obtained from the Fatality Accident Reporting System (FARS) for the period of 2015-2019. The analysis revealed that weather, driver age groups, drunk/ distracted/ drowsy drivers, hit and run, involvement of large truck, VRU age group, gender, presence of sidewalk, presence of intersection, light condition, and speeding were common significant factors for both models. The factor found to be significant exclusively for the Binary Logit model includes Area type. Factors found to be significant exclusively for the Ordered Logit model include Presence of Crosswalk and Fire station nearby. The results validate the use of lag time as an alternative to crash count and crash severity analysis. The findings of this study pave the way for practitioners and policymakers to evaluate the effectiveness of midblock pedestrian crossing facilities, as well as to use lag time to investigate crashes and corroborate results from traditional crash-based investigations.

Approximately 47,700 pedestrians were killed between the years of 2000 - 2009. School buses are one of the safest modes of transportation (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2004). However, the Central Florida school district eliminated bus transportation within the 2-mile radius from schools just last year. Children must prepare for an alternative mode of transportation; walking and biking. The purpose of this research was two-fold. First to develop an online safety training program for elementary school children; and second, a self-report questionnaire was constructed and piloted to measure how safety training and school infrastructure affects students' pedestrian risk-taking attitudes and risk perceptions to avoid the dangers of walking and biking to and from school. A 2x2 Factorial Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to test two categorical independent variables (safety awareness training, school infrastructure) for each of the two continuous dependent variables (pedestrian risk-taking attitudes and risk perceptions of pedestrian behavior). Using data from the pilot study, the researcher developed, self-reported questionnaires demonstrated that there was a significant difference between schools. Those receiving the training had lower mean scores in risk-taking attitudes than those who did not receive the training. Regardless of intervention, School 2 (complete infrastructure) takes fewer risks than School 1(incomplete infrastructure). The mean difference between groups was not statistically significant.