Month: January 2018

By MIMI KIRK, City Lab
Earlier this year, the driver analytics company Zendrive found that an appalling 88 percent of people use their mobile phones while driving, and a cursory look around the roads will probably confirm that figure. Researchers point to distracted driving as a main culprit of a disturbing trend: After falling for decades, the number of fatalities from motor vehicles has climbed for the last two years.
Recent statistics for pedestrian deaths for teenagers show a similar regression: The number of fatalities for those under 19 has decreased over the past two decades, but since 2013 has risen by 13 percent for 12 to 19-year-olds. Media accounts are often quick to blame kids wearing headphones or video-chatting when drivers are actually at fault. When a 14-year-old Philadelphia girl on her way to cheerleader practice was struck by a distracted driver, one local TV report opened its story with the fact that she was Facetiming with a friend while in a marked crosswalk. The driver was later charged with aggravated assault.
Zendrive’s new study focuses on the behavior of drivers around schools. Using sensors in phones, the company measures whether users are texting, making calls, and otherwise fiddling with their phones while the car is moving. It also analyzes rapid acceleration and hard braking. Based on driver behavior in the vicinity of 75,000 public schools in 2,222 counties, Zendrive then ranked the safest schools, counties, and states. (The U.S. has close to 100,000 public schools and a little over 3,000 counties.)
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https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/09/the-bad-drivers-around-your-kids-school/540687/?utm_source=nl__link2_092817&silverid=MzEwMTkyMjY0ODQ2S0

[B’Spokes: Wait, did he just say peds were safer not crossing at an intersection?]
-> Accident Analysis & Prevention published a paper that considered biannual clock changes resulting from transitions to and from daylight saving time were used to compare road traffic collisions (RTCs) in the UK during daylight and darkness but at the same time of day. Results suggested there was a significantly greater risk of a pedestrian RTC at a crossing after-dark than during daylight, and that the risk of an RTC after-dark was greater at a pedestrian crossing than at a location at least 50 m away from a crossing. This increased risk is not due to a lack of lighting at these locations as 98% of RTCs at pedestrian crossings after-dark were lit by road lighting. “The Effect of Ambient Light Condition on Road Traffic Collisions Involving Pedestrians on Pedestrian Crossings” https://bit.ly/2fOlnGo
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.

-> The Roadway Safety Institute reports in a recent project in which University of MN researchers evaluated whether a phenomenon known as “safety in numbers” was observable in crash data collected for Minneapolis, MN—one of the few cities that currently has a sufficiently rich dataset of pedestrian and bicyclist counts to allow for meaningful safety analysis. (Safety in Numbers? Accessibility, Traffic, and Safety of Nonmotorized Travelers: https://bit.ly/2fP7bNB) Researchers found that safety in numbers played a positive role: 1) pedestrians were at a lower risk of being hit by a driver at intersections with more pedestrian traffic, and individual drivers were at a lower risk of hitting pedestrians at intersections with more car traffic, and 2) intersections with more vehicles and cyclists exhibited lower crash rates. https://bit.ly/2fPyzeh
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.

-> BikeBiz reports the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured on the roads of the West Midlands, England has dropped by 20% since the regional police force last year launched an operation targeting so-called “close-pass” drivers. Motorists who overtook cyclists too closely can “expect prosecution, not education,” said a strongly worded statement issued by the West Midlands Police Traffic Unit. The statement added that it was motorists mostly at fault in road crashes involving cyclists and said the force has a “zero tolerance approach for any offence involving a vulnerable road user.” https://bit.ly/2fLvQPA
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.