This important new report concludes that the majority of pedestrian street deaths in the U.S. could have been prevented with safer street design, particularly to slow traffic speeds and provide safer pedestrian crossing. Recently, weve been having a debate in San Francisco about whether to accede to the Fire Departments requests for wider residential side streets; wider streets lead to faster speeds and hence more accidents and more serious accidents. From the attached: The majority of pedestrian deaths occur on roadways that encourage speeding, and speeding is a factor in nearly one-third of all traffic fatalities. The report finds that these deaths can be prevented through changes to the design of our streets: providing sidewalks, installing high-visibility crosswalks and refuge islands, and calming traffic speeds. This has proved true for roads such as NE 125th St. in Seattle, WA. In 2011, the city added a marked crosswalk, reduced the number of travel lanes, and installed bike lanes, along with other measures, to provide for the safety of pedestrians in a high-crash corridor where 87 percent of drivers were speeding. The modifications have reduced the rate of collisions by 10 percent and speeding by 11 percent and led to more people walking and biking along the roadway.
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 16:56:43 +0000
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