The 12 Days of Safety Myths
December 21, 2018
By Don Kostelec

“Clark, that’s the gift that keeps on givin’ the whole year!”
– Cousin Eddie, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

New pedestrian safety campaigns are like Clark finding out about that Jelly of the Month Club membership: You really expect something useful and change-inducing from your highway agency, then you find out all you’re getting is a jar of toe jam.

A candidate to become the Cousin Eddie of the traffic safety world might be Colorado DOT’s Fred Estrian.  According to CDOT, “Fred Estrian—a play on the word ‘pedestrian’—is the life-size walk-signal man with a passion for protecting Colorado road users.” And get this: CDOT went as far as putting Fred on billboards (highway billboards!) to remind pedestrians to make eye contact.

The tip for pedestrians to make eye contact might seem like common sense to someone like Fred Estrian. In reality, they reflect the Fred Flintstone era of thinking by DOTs about what actually happens when people try to cross. Streetsblog Denver said in response to one of Cousin Freddie’s videos, “It’s a shame you hate clichés so much, Fred, because you are one.”

Make Eye Contact with Reality
I walk or bike with my daughter every day to school. We have since she was in preschool. Our journey in Boise includes crossing a signalized, t-intersection of a five-lane road and a three-lane road. We cross the three-lane leg of that intersection.

Our walk today was indicative of how ill-informed the tip is for pedestrians to make eye contact. A regular problem at this intersection is the right turn on red that’s made across our desired direction of travel. Like most intersections, the driver’s cannot make this maneuver without advancing into the crosswalk to look left and then make that right turn on red.

What happens to us is the drivers regularly encroach on that space as the five-lane road gets a dedicated left turn signal onto the 3-lane road. With no regard for signal cycles and no real ability to see the signal of the intersecting road, the drivers block our way as we get the WALK signal when the green arrow phase ends. This morning it was the driver of a white delivery truck.

The driver didn’t see us waiting to cross from the right as he approached the intersection because he was eagerly looking left, hoping to save a couple seconds, just as the traffic engineers prioritize him to do in allowing right turn on reds on this school walk route.

Aside from him not bothering to look, which prohibited us from making any eye contact as we got the WALK signal, the high profile of his truck would have made it physically impossible for my daughter or any of her schoolmates to make eye contact with him in almost any circumstance.

It’s this day-to-day reality makes a seemingly common sense suggestion like “make eye contact” so frustrating. It doesn’t align with how roads are actually engineered and how motorists are encouraged via that engineering to operate on them. Add to that the issues associated with window tinting and glare off of windshields, as Cousin Freddie observed in his video.

I asked for changes to this intersection to limit right turn on red and prohibit the protected-permissive left turns from the 5-lane road as we have the walk signal. I got this response from Fred Gineer, PE, PTOE:

• “Operating any transportation system, particularly those in urban/suburban contexts, is a matter of balance – maintaining a certain amount of mobility for all users while incorporating infrastructure in a way that balances everyone’s needs…
  Blanket installation of right turn on red restrictions is problematic from an enforcement perspective, and is challenging if the case is isolated to specific times of day.”

“Balances everyone’s needs” is the engineer’s version of “safety is a shared responsibility.” It makes it easy for them to defer hard decisions.

It’s wasted days and wasted nights trying to get safe infrastructure for kids, and given what we our eyes usually see with motorists encroaching on this crosswalk, “Freddy Fender” is probably a more appropriate name for Mr. Estrian. (PS: If you didn’t catch the joke in that last sentence, please pause from reading this and go to this link.)

Assertiveness
“We have consistently found that body gestures and hands up are a very high level of assertiveness, while the observing of traffic has no impact on yielding at all,” noted Gene Bourquin in an April 8, 2018 Facebook post.

Bourquin works in a field known as orientation and mobility, a set of techniques to instruct people who are blind and vision impaired so they can independently navigate their home and community. They’re in the freedom business. Bourquin has published numerous research papers on the topic, including some with one of the people I admire most in the transportation profession, Janet Barlow.

A 2016 study published by Bourquin, Barlow, and others examined the effectiveness of “gazing” toward vehicles at signalized intersections and roundabouts compared to other actions. They define gaze as the “behaviors of pedestrians who are blind that indicate an attention shift, by head and face orientation, toward the driver and vehicle waiting at a crosswalk to turn.”

For people who are blind or vision impaired, the thought is if they make a gesture of turning their head while addressing a crosswalk, then motorists will understand their intentions when compared to simply standing on a ramp waiting to cross. Many orientation and mobility specialists teach them to make these gazing motions.

The great irony of this study is the opening paragraph cites a 2014 Colorado DOT 2014 website headline, “CDOT Reminds Pedestrians and Drivers to Lock Eyes and Keep Heads Up at Crosswalks.” CDOT’s Communications Director said, “The simple act of making eye contact at intersections and crosswalks could reverse this growing problem, in turn saving lives.”

The study looked at a variety of situations related to a gaze and found that “these types of pedestrian behaviors might not substantially influence drivers’ yielding rates for pedestrians who are blind, and that any minor effect on drivers is unpredictable.” They conclude that people who are blind or vision impaired “do not need to be concerned that a lack of head movement and face gaze will cause drivers to yield less often.”

Think about that for a second. A blind person displaying a cane attempting to cross a street should be one of the clearest indicators to a motorist that a vulnerable road user is trying to cross a street. Yet, the drivers carry on regardless of the individual’s obvious needs.

It’s a small study, Bourquin admits. Bourquin’s Facebook post cited a study published at the 2018 Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting on pedestrian assertiveness and motorist yielding, which continued this field of study and confirmed some of his previous studies on the topic.

A key finding was that motorists yielded at a much higher rate when pedestrians displayed a higher level of assertiveness when crossing a street. Driver yielding rates were:

• 71% for pedestrians exhibiting Level 1 (high) assertiveness. 
• 30% for Level 2 (moderate) assertiveness. 
• 3% for Level 3 (low) assertiveness.

The table below from that study defines these levels of assertiveness. Essentially, the drivers yield at a much higher rate if you just keep walking rather than stopping in an attempt to make eye contact.

Bourquin’s reply to me was “What we might think, using common sense, turns out to often be wrong of perhaps not quite what we expected. That said, while not stopping before crossing may garner a high proportion of yields, it is not a practical way to behave as a pedestrian and not often possible.”

And his last sentence is true. It doesn’t mean that a pedestrian flippantly crosses the street without looking. His study also noted that it might be true that making actual eye contact, when possible, leads to greater yielding.

There are studies which concluded that a pedestrian staring at a driver did prompt greater yielding percentage, but that was in a controlled study where it was possible to see the driver.

When possible is the key point there. The problem is that state DOTs and their traffic offices don’t understand the actual realities on the street and the numerous factors that make eye contact practically impossible in many situations.

My own personal walking experience changed after reading these studies. I wear sunglasses in almost all weather conditions due to sensitive eyes and frequent migraines. So, as I approach intersections I walk assertively, with a minor head and eye movement to scan the traffic to make sure I’m in a safe situation. That motion is practically imperceptible to the motorists due to the glasses, so they experience my assertiveness rather than deference to their physical dominance. They yield.

So, I have some new career advice for Cousin Freddie.

• You’d make one helluva Fred Tangular Rapid Flashing Beacon or, perhaps, try a turn at being a Fred Estrian Hybrid Beacon!

That gift would keep on giving the whole year!