Doak TC's Traffic Safety Summit Notes, Day 3

It was the third and final day of Michigan's State Traffic Safety Summit at the Kellogg Center in East Lansing. The final day included only morning sessions. Here are my notes and impressions about the sessions that I attended today. They're centered around two main topics and their associated attributes.

First, bikes and pedestrians.

- The US Secretary of Transportation issued a new policy statement in March regarding bicycle and pedestrian accommodation regulations and recommendations. He encourages states, local governments, professional associations and others to adopt similar policies. The upshot of the policy statement says that because of numerous individual and community benefits that walking and bicycling provide, the DOT policy is to incorporate safe and convenient walking and bicycling facilities into transportation projects. You can find the complete policy statement at http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2010/bicycle-ped.html.

- There are now more behavioral studies evaluating the effectiveness of various pedestrian crossings. Pedestrians themselves all have something in common, though. People do not want to wait, and the longer we make them wait the more likely they will take chances. They'll also cross where convenient. That explains why "hot button" crosswalks work well. There is also a need to channelize the pedestrians, and make the crosswalk waiting area safe and comfortable. It appears that a crossing's greater perceived risk also led to better compliance from pedestrians, but waiting still led to risk taking.

- High traffic intersections with multiple lanes (12,000 - 15,000 average daily traffic (ADT)) will need crosswalks and signals with much higher visibility. Signals with rectangular rapid flashing beacons (RRFB) are very effective. Traffic needs to stop well back (obviously) because a pedestrian crossing multiple lanes of traffic can't see beyond the first vehicle they are crossing in front of. SO, walking at 4 feet per second, they are 1 second away from being hit by the second vehicle that they can't see yet. The terminology for this is multiple threat crashes.

- An interesting side note: remember that the researcher said people do not want to wait? Well, he tested this theory in an office that wanted to encourage people to use the stairs for exercise. Left to their own devices, they normally chose the ease of the elevator. However, when the researchers added a slight delay to the elevator's response time the stairways became much more crowded. People do not want to wait. Remember that when designing crosswalks for compliance. Increased wait times will reduce compliance.

So, how bout bikes?

- Jeff Bagdade, of Opus International, demonstrated that there are new emerging strategies for mixing bicycles more safely into the transportation systems of a municipality. Obviously, seeing the USDOT's policy statement, this is will have a significant impact on the way roadway projects are designed and evaluated from this point on. So, it was good to see that there are new strategies being tried and tested.

- There are new ways of designing shared bike lanes with sharrow markings and bike boxes providing more protected turns at intersections. Some New York streets that received road diets gained an offset/floating parking island that provided a barrier to the bike lane at the curb. Picture this: sidewalk- then curb - then bike lane - then painted barrier, then traditional vehicle parking - and then the street traffic. The parked cars provide a barrier for the bikes. The bikes are also now on the passenger side of the car along with a barrier greatly limiting "dooring" (being whacked by the parked vehicle driver opening their door).

- The upshot for bikes? There are a variety of new strategies that have the benefit of being new and innovative, but the drawback of not much data yet.

Finally, why do we do this stuff?

- As I said a couple of days ago, Michigan traffic fatalities were down again last year. They've come down by hundreds in the past few years. Injuries are down as well. We were reminded how terribly quick a car crash changes the lives of families forever and about that terrible knock on the door that Troopers, Deputies and Officers never want to deliver. The Office Of Highway Safety Planning's Director, Michael Prince told us how the jobs that the State's traffic safety advocates do lead directly to fewer incidences of the terrible knock at the door.

Someone NOT being killed in a crash is hard to picture, though, and hard to quantify for others that want to measure results against numbers. My suggestion for y'all is to take some time and do some people watching at the mall next week. Sit and count a hundred-or-so people. It's quite a bunch, and they all have families, faces and names. Imagine that they're all still at the mall a year later because of a child seat you helped with, a crosswalk you improved, a drunk driver you arrested, a bike helmet you gave out, a teen driver you talked to, a guard rail or rumble strip you installed, a law you passed, a grant you secured, a repeat offender you took off the road. Now count a another thousand people-or-so and know that they're at the mall with their families instead of languishing with a life-long debilitating injury. That's why you do this stuff.

Michael also reminded us, though, that there are 800 or more people that don't know it yet, but they'll have a crash this year and not survive to see the spring of 2011. We're aiming at zero, and we're a lot closer to that than we've been in our entire lifetimes.

Be safe.