Pedestrian safety - Global Road Safety Partnership

• 79% of the crashes that killed or seriously injured
pedestrians involved private vehicles as opposed
to taxis, trucks and buses.
• Senior pedestrians (over 65 years old) accounted
for 38% of all pedestrian fatalities and 28% of
severe injuries.
• Manhattan had four times as many pedestrians
killed or severely injured per mile of street compared
to the other four boroughs.
• 43% of pedestrians killed in Manhattan lived in
another borough or outside of New York City.
• 40% of pedestrian crashes occurred in the late
afternoon and/or early evening.
• Late night pedestrian crashes were nearly twice
as deadly as other time periods.
Pedestrian safety: a road safety manual for decision-makers and practitioners
• installation of pedestrian countdown signals at
1500 intersections;
• implementing 75 additional 30km/h hour school
speed zones;
• implementing Neighbourhood Slow Zones in several
neighbourhoods citywide, where the speed
limit will be reduced to 30 km/h; and
• conducting public information campaigns and
enforcement targeting speeding along major corridors
and intersections where drivers commonly
fail to yield.
In addition to pedestrian safety measures, there are
a number of other measures being implemented in
order to reduce road traffic injuries and fatalities in
general (6).
5: Evaluating pedestrian safety programmes
The New York City Department of Transportation
formulated a pedestrian safety action plan involving
other key agencies such as New York City Police
Department, New York City Department of Health
and Mental Hygiene, and New York State Department
of Motor Vehicles. The action plan focuses on a
combination of highly targeted engineering, enforcement
and education/public information measures.
Implementation began immediately, starting with
strengthening already existing actions. Many measures
set out in the plan that have been implemented
already include:
• redesign of 30 kilometres of high-crash corridors
annually;
An evaluation of 13 recent safety measures
implemented in New York City included pedestrian
interventions such as all pedestrian phase, highvisibility
crossings, increasing pedestrian crossing
time, split-phase timing, pedestrian fencing, road
diet (reduction in the number of travel lanes, with
added turning lanes), speed hump and speed limit
reduction (6). Split-phase timing, signal installations,
high-visibility crossings, all pedestrian phase and
increasing pedestrian crossing time were found to
reduce pedestrian and total crashes by 25–51%.
Measures with lesser effect were posted speed
limit reduction signs, and middle block pedestrian
fencing (6).
AFTER:
New York City Department of Transportation
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