Pedestrian Safety Needed in Los Angeles
In terms of vehicle-pedestrian collisions, the city of Los Angeles has been deemed as one of the worst in America. Over the past 5 years in Los Angeles, traffic collisions involving pedestrians only made up 8% of all traffic collisions, yet they represented 44% of all traffic fatalities. The majority of these collisions are caused by speeding and failing to yield. In attempt to alleviate these incidents, on August 24, 2015, the Mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti launched a plan ‘Vision Zero’ to reduce traffic-related deaths by 20% by 2017, and eliminate all traffic-related deaths by 2025 in the City of Los Angeles. While Vision Zero provides multiple approaches on how to improve pedestrian safety, specifically Pedestrian Scramble and Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon should be considered amongst the top choices for improving pedestrian safety. Developing a policy geared toward these techniques is also needed for the City of Los Angeles.
For those who are unfamiliar, a Pedestrian Scramble is a type of traffic signal movement that temporarily stops all vehicular traffic in order to allow pedestrians to cross an intersection in every direction, including diagonally, at the same time. With the employment of this method, it has been shown to reduce vehicle-pedestrian collisions by as much as 35%. An image of Pedestrian Scramble is shown below.
A Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon (PHB) is a traffic control device used to stop vehicular traffic in order for pedestrians to cross when activated. These are generally applied at mid-block locations where it is difficult to find a gap in traffic in order to successfully cross and a significant demand of pedestrians wanting to cross at a particular location should be present. This technique has been shown to be the most effective for improving driver-yield compliance rates. With the employment of this method, a reduction of vehicle-pedestrian collisions can decrease by as much as 69%. An image of PHB is shown below.
While these systems have been deployed in select locations, it is important to develop a policy to ease the transition for widespread use. For a policy recommendation for the City of Los Angeles, all intersections, mid-block locations, and uncontrolled crosswalks within the city that pose a threat to pedestrians shall be required to employ Pedestrian Scramble and Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons in order to successfully eradicate vehicle-pedestrian collisions.
In order to implement these systems, there are a number of sectors that must be involved. For starters, transportation agencies (such as the Los Angeles Department of Transportation) plan and implement transportation projects within the city of Los Angeles. The Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control (ATSAC) System, the traffic control center for the City of Los Angeles will be responsible for monitoring these systems, as they are accustomed to monitoring over 4,600 signalized intersections within the City of Los Angeles. It may also help to deploy LAPD officers to these problem areas to provide education and enforcement during high traffic-collision hours. Another key factor in the viability of a transportation project is the availability of funding. Therefore, funding resources at the state and local level that can potentially support design, implementation, operation, maintenance, and marketing of the project should be identified. Another sector to consider is the public. These techniques are fairly new, so it is necessary to develop a public information campaign in order to educate motorists and pedestrians about these techniques.
Moving forward, more studies need to be conducted in order to identify hazardous locations where such pedestrian-safety systems are needed. In the future, better and more technologically advanced strategies should be developed in order to further the agenda of eliminating vehicle-pedestrian collisions. For the short term, it is imperative for public education and engagement in the planning stages. Lastly, another thing to look into is how these pedestrian-safety strategies will operate with connected vehicles and autonomous vehicles. These are the next steps in furthering the campaign for eliminating vehicle-pedestrian traffic collisions.
