How often do you think about stoplights? Not just to acknowledge that the light is green or red or how many times the “Don’t Walk” hand on the pedestrian crosswalk counter has flashed so you know how long you have to cross, but the design and placement of that signal. (The red hand flashes 17 times at the freeway exit intersection on the Lowry Hill Greenway on Lyndale Avenue, for reference.) I will grant, the readership of this fine blog is more likely to have thought about this than most.
I have had a growing irritation with placement of signals over the past few years, particularly after my most recent trip to visit a former host family in Austria, where I lived off and on for almost three years. Like many others who have commented on differences between European and American street design, I was struck by how much safer I feel as a pedestrian there. A part of that was because the crosswalk was significantly less blocked than the average U.S. intersection. That could relate to cultural norms, more driving training (getting a license in Austria is both time consuming and expensive) or a stronger restriction on right turns on red (generally not allowed anywhere), but another aspect was simply where signals are placed at intersections. Most often, they are on the near side of the intersection. If there is a signal in the middle or on the far side of the intersection, it is supplemental, not primary.
What does that mean for user safety? Vehicles see the light sooner before reaching the intersection, which makes it less likely that cars run red lights. Importantly, though, vehicles need to stop farther back to see the signal, meaning that the crosswalk is kept clear for pedestrian use. In Austria and Switzerland, a stop bar serves as an extra indicator of where cars should stay, but the signal placement itself is doing most of the work. This intentional design choice makes it safer for multiple road users to interact in the same space. Pedestrians have less fear of cars inching forward and encroaching on the crosswalk, and cars are less likely to run red lights because they can see the signal sooner. Keeping cars farther back also allows for a tighter turning radius for a vehicle coming from a perpendicular road, allowing intersections to be smaller, use fewer materials and have shorter crossing distances for pedestrians.
Now let’s look at some infrastructure in Zurich, Switzerland.
Compare the pictures above with the ones below from Lyndale and Hennepin avenues (and insert your own mental images from pretty much any intersection in the United States).
Notice how much the Lyndale and Hennepin examples are oriented around making it easier for cars to move around at the detriment of any other user. The crosswalk and stop bar paint are faded, and enough cars ignore them to make these crossings dangerous anyway.
The United States has a road traffic death rate (per 100,000) roughly five times higher than that of Austria and Switzerland. Again, many factors could contribute to this, but at least some of it has to do with the intentional design of roads and signals. Other elements could include:
- Narrower roads leading to slower speeds,
- Smaller average vehicle sizes,
- Higher barriers to getting a license,
- Traffic camera enforcement, and
- A prohibition on right turns on red.
All of these things could be done here! I couldn’t find any Austrian or Swiss data on pedestrians in a quick search, but the United States is killing more than 6,000 pedestrians annually, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), a rate that has increased more than 50 percent since 2010 and now represents 17 percent of all traffic deaths — the highest rate in over 35 years.
I also find it telling that the NHTSA reports that intersections are a major driver of accidents and fatalities, advocates that engineering could help change this, and then focuses solely on enforcement and education campaigns. Why not look at the engineering of the intersection? Similarly, the GHSA report points to increased vehicle size with the growth in SUV sales and increased driver distraction from cell phones as major drivers of pedestrian accidents, and then still focuses on pedestrian education opportunities as the main solution being pursued.
An important, albeit obvious, note is that vehicles themselves are becoming much safer for vehicle-vehicle accidents, but pedestrians don’t benefit from those improvements because a pedestrian can’t get improved airbags or better crumple zones. As the height and size of vehicles increases, pedestrians become less visible, even if an onboard camera might help drivers who aren’t distracted by everything else going on within the modern car cabin. Whereas a pedestrian being hit might have been able to roll on top of a vehicle before, now that same pedestrian more likely is getting pushed underneath the vehicle by unnecessary bull bars.
We know that cities in Minnesota aren’t in a position to enforce traffic rules with signal cameras (state preemption plus a bigger equity discussion). But if we aren’t going to enforce traffic rules via camera or street patrols, and pedestrian injuries and deaths are on the rise, how do we change the street design to disincentivize certain dangerous behaviors? How do we implement designs that change the risk/reward metrics for drivers to help them avoid endangering other users? When do cars stop being the focal point in street design?
Train crossings have cross arms come down to physically block cars from obstructing the tracks. So, why do we distrust cars when it comes to trains but we do trust them when it comes to pedestrians? A train-car collision certainly will favor the train, but a car will also certainly win against a pedestrian or cyclist. Maybe we do need a campaign like Montreal’s to demonstrate where crosswalks are. A potentially easier step, though, would be to work on our street design.
Whether removing right turns on red; adding chicanes (a curve in a road) or diverters such as islands; keeping cars away from pedestrians by using stop lines that are farther back; adding more bump outs or designing roads with near-side intersections: A multitude of options could help improve pedestrian safety. Let’s hope that more of them start becoming the norm in our country one day soon.