The impact of infrastructure on driver behavior on pedestrian crossings – case studies in two Mazovian cities

In 2019 field studies were conducted in order to check how various aspects of pedestrian and cycle crossing infrastructure influence driver behavior. The overall goal was to verify the adequacy of the road safety-related provisions of the main strategic and planning documents of the Mazovia Region. The crossings analyzed in Warsaw and Radom were chosen so as to take into account all the types of traffic calming mentioned in the Spatial Development Plan of Mazovia as serving to improve safety on pedestrian crossings. Other aspects taken into account included road width, type of intersection and presence/type of traffic lights. The field studies focused on the behavior of drivers towards pedestrians and cyclists, including behavior which determines how quickly a driver can react to a non-motorized person appearing. The crossings were observed from a distance, so that the presence of the observer wouldn’t influence the participants’ behavior. Each crossing was observed and recorded for at least thirty minutes in order to identify how often a driver: stops before a crossing, drives across in front of or behind a non-motorized person, stops on the crossing or drives fast across it. In selected places, another recorded aspect was whether the driver looks around before driving across the crossing. However, such detailed observation was not possible in the majority of places due to high traffic and/or inadequate visibility of the interiors of cars. The field studies in Radom were conducted by Sebastian Pawłowski and Łukasz Zaborowski of the Radom branch of the Mazovian Office for Regional Planning. The study results indicate that dangerous driver behavior is influenced by: the width of the road on the crossing, bicycle crossings and right-of-way provisions, physical traffic calming measures and traffic lights. Measures which were found to be ineffective include hatched road markings signaling a part of the road which is not to be driven across and red lights with a green arrow allowing for a conditional right-turn after stopping, which were in fact treated as green right-turn lights. The study confirmed the accuracy of the measures indicated in the strategic and spatial planning documents of the Mazovia Region, as well as the need for them to be implemented more often. An analysis of the field study results allowed for the identification of the impact of individual road crossing parameters on drivers’ behavior, thus providing new material in reference to earlier local studies and a 2018 Polish national study. A Polish version of this article will also be published in a later issue of this periodical.