Evaluation of the impact of active signage on road user behaviour at pedestrian crossings

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to verify the effectiveness of the active pedestrian crossings equipped with flashing lights activated automatically by detected pedestrians. Eight unsignalised pedestrian crossings were video-recorded for 48 hours each, both before and after installation of the equipment. An additional survey was done a month after the installation on three of the crossings. A traffic Conflict Rate was calculated for each crossing, as the number of conflicts per hour divided by the product of hourly pedestrian and vehicle traffic volume. The ANOVA test was used to check the statistical significance of changes of the indicators. The average percentage of drivers yielding to pedestrians increased by 94.8% and the average waiting time decreased by 39.2%. The Conflict Rate decreased at five out of eight sites. The average speeds of vehicles approaching the crossings decreased by 3.9 km/h. The “before-one month after” analysis mostly confirmed the positive results of the first analysis. Generally, at four out of eight crossings the effects were clearly positive, at two, relatively positive, and at the remaining two there was no clear positive effect. These sites were multilane streets which suggests that such sites should be either signalised or narrowed.