Finding strategies to improve pedestrian safety in rural areas

Pedestrian safety is a serious problem nationwide, and not confined to urban areas. Every year, several hundred pedestrians are injured or killed in traffic accidents in rural parts of New England. Pedestrian accident risk doesn't always follow the rules one might expect. For example, in urban areas, almost half of all pedestrian accidents occur on marked crosswalks with signal control, or at locations without marked crosswalks. This makes strong intuitive sense when considering human behavior, since many motorists probably do not even notice the presence of many marked crosswalks or modify their behavior in response to them. However, pedestrians may feel more secure about crossing the road due to the crosswalk and assume that approaching drivers will yield to them. This dichotomy between the public's perception and the reality of crosswalk safety is a serious problem. Unfortunately, there is little solid evidence to substantiate or refute this idea. What makes this situation even more alarming is that many jurisdictions continue to install mid-block crosswalks without speed reduction measures, signal control or other substantial warning to motorists that there is a high likelihood of pedestrians crossing the road. Consequently, the objective of this research is to study the safety of pedestrian crossings in rural areas to discover and confirm factors that help explain high rates of motor vehicle-pedestrian collisions at pedestrian crossings. The following environmental and exposure factors are considered: population density, type of pedestrian crossing, traffic control used at the crossing, surrounding land use type, highway facility type, vehicle travel speed, vehicle volume and pedestrian volume. The study uses statistical analysis to identify combinations of factors that are significant for explaining differences in pedestrian injury and fatality experience among otherwise similar sites.