Enhancing Pedestrian Safety through the Development of Advanced Operational Strategies for Crosswalks in Residential Areas

Pedestrians are the most vulnerable group in the traffic. Every year approximately 40,000 pedestrians are killed in the world due to road traffic crashes. In the state of Qatar, the situations are even worse with around one-third of the total road traffic deaths coming from pedestrians. The main aim of this driving simulator study was to investigate the impact of different measures on driving behavior. To this end, five different treatments were tested and compared with the untreated condition. The treatment conditions included two detection-based measures (i.e., Variable Message Sign VMS and LED), two different road-marking conditions (i.e., Zigzag marking and road narrowing marking) and a physical road narrowing condition. Each condition was tested with a yield/stop controlled marked crosswalk for two situations. In the first situation (Situation PA) there was no pedestrian at the crosswalk, while the second situation was based on the presence of a pedestrian (Situation PP). The experiment was conducted using the driving simulator at Qatar University. Sixty-one volunteers possessing a valid Qatari driving license participated in the study. The collected data was analyzed for drivers’ yielding rates, vehicle-pedestrian interactions, and driving speed. The results showed that the three conditions, i.e., VMS, Narrowing and Physical were effective in improving drivers’ yielding rate up to 98.2%. In addition, we found that all the treatment conditions were effective in reducing drivers’ travel speed in Situation PP. Nevertheless, in the situation with no pedestrian present, the physical road narrowing outperformed the other conditions in terms of reducing travel speed. Taking into account the results from this study, we recommend Physical condition as a potentially effective and low-cost treatment for improving safety at yield/stop controlled crosswalks.