Pedestrian Safety in Road Traffic in Poland

Every third road accident in Poland involves a pedestrian as a participant or, most of the time, a casualty. Pedestrian accidents are usually the result of complex situations and the outcome of a number of factors related to driver and pedestrian behaviour and road infrastructure. Safety depends largely on how well the traffic condition is perceived and on visibility in traffic. The paper presents the results of analyses of methodologies for systematic studies of pedestrian behaviour and pedestrian-driver relations. The effects of the location of the site, type of cross-section and other selected parameters on pedestrian and driver behaviour are demonstrated. The analyses showed that pedestrians are most often put at risk by too long pedestrian crossings, vehicles going too fast around pedestrian crossings, lack of proper sight distance and poorly lit or unlit pedestrian crossings. The reason for such defective infrastructure is that planners, designers, contractors and maintenance services are not receiving any support from design, marking and maintenance regulations for pedestrian traffic. In addition, the Road Traffic Law is not restrictive enough when it comes to drivers' obligations towards pedestrian safety. Polish design regulations allow long pedestrian crossings up to four lanes in one direction or three lanes in two directions irrespective of traffic control and speed limits. Pedestrian crossings should be kept at a maximum of three lanes. There is nothing in the design regulations about the required driver-pedestrian sight distance. Neither does the Road Traffic Law help engineers with that. It is legal to park vehicles within 10 m of a pedestrian crossing which does not guarantee the necessary sight distance. Drivers must be able to see a pedestrian waiting or stepping onto the crossing from a distance that will help them come to a stop safely. It is safer to follow the principle of providing adequate pedestrian sight distance. Recommendations for pedestrian crossing design are also provided.

[1]  Andras Varhelyi,et al.  Dynamic speed adaptation based on information technology - a theoretical background , 1997 .

[2]  J Ozanne-Smith,et al.  THE BEHAVIOUR AND CRASH INVOLVEMENT RISK OF CHILD PEDESTRIANS AND BICYCLISTS: A TRAFFIC EXPOSURE STUDY , 1991 .

[3]  Ying Ni,et al.  Pedestrian Safety at Urban Signalised Intersections , 2010 .

[4]  Per E Gårder,et al.  The impact of speed and other variables on pedestrian safety in Maine. , 2004, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[5]  T Hummel.  DUTCH PEDESTRIAN SAFETY RESEARCH REVIEW , 1999 .

[6]  Nicolas Guéguen,et al.  A pedestrian’s stare and drivers’ stopping behavior: A field experiment at the pedestrian crossing , 2015 .

[7]  Julie Hatfield,et al.  Misunderstanding of right-of-way rules at various pedestrian crossing types: observational study and survey. , 2007, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[8]  Lars Leden,et al.  TOWARDS A METHOD TO IMPROVE ROAD SAFETY FOR PEDESTRIANS AND CYCLISTS, ESPECIALLY IN CHILD PEDESTRIAN ENVIRONMENTS. A CASE STUDY IN BORAS, SWEDEN , 2001 .

[9]  B N Fildes,et al.  SURVEY OF OLDER ROAD USERS: BEHAVIOURAL AND TRAVEL ISSUES , 1994 .

[10]  Andras Varhelyi.  Dynamic speed adaptation based on information technology , 1998 .

[11]  Ignacio Parra,et al.  Combination of Feature Extraction Methods for SVM Pedestrian Detection , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[12]  Bastian Jonathan Schroeder,et al.  A Behavior-Based Methodology for Evaluating Pedestrian-Vehicle Interaction at Crosswalks , 2008 .

[13]  Reinhard Hössinger,et al.  - 1-Car drivers ’ attitudes towards non-signalised zebra crossings and their impact on behaviour , 2010 .

[14]  George Yannis,et al.  Patterns of pedestrian attitudes, perceptions and behaviour in Europe , 2013 .

[15]  P. Norman,et al.  Understanding pedestrians' road crossing decisions: an application of the theory of planned behaviour. , 1998, Health education research.

[16]  N. Sally.  SURVEY OF OLDER ROAD USERS BEHAVIOURAL & TRAVEL ISSUES , 2016 .