Comparative analysis of pedestrian accidents risk at unsignalized intersections

Abstract

More than one accident of three that involve pedestrians in urban area occurs at road intersections. The users’ inproper behaviour, the geometrical characteristics of the intersections, and the high speeds of vehicles are the main causes of pedestrian accidents. In this field, the procedures of road safety analysis (Road Safety Audit and Road Safety Review) play a fundamental role: they are the techniques of investigation aimed at identifying the safety issues and the possible improvements. Nowadays, however, the safety analysis does not allow a quantitative assessment of the level of safety regarding pedestrians. The objective of this work, is to propose a procedure for the quantitative risk analysis. The first phase of the study has been oriented to the definition of the virtual schemes associated with the possible configurations for unsignalized intersections in urban areas, predominantly characterized by local roads. The urban areas in which the residential function prevails, while it is poorly available in the circulation function, were considered then. The criteria, aimed at the characterization of the level of safety, offered to pedestrians by the real urban intersections, have been developed in the second phase. For this purpose, three categories of information have been useful: 1) the data describing the geometry characteristic of the intersection; 2) the geometric characteristic of road elements responsible of the functional pedestrian protection; 3) vehicular and pedestrian traffic data.