The 12 Days of Safety Myths
December 14, 2018
by Don Kostelec

Walk Farce called it the ultimate “go home, traffic engineers, you’re drunk!” study and survey. It’s a research project funded by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) called “Guide for Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety at Alternative Intersections and Interchanges (A.I.I.).”

“Alternative intersections” is putting it nicely for engineers who are sipping a little too much spiked eggnog these days. Here’s a more detailed description of this ongoing research:

• “New alternative intersection and interchange designs – including Diverging Diamond Interchanges (DDI), Displaced Left-Turn (DLT) or Continuous Flow Intersections (CFI), Restricted Crossing U-Turn (RCUT) intersections, Median U-Turn (MUT) intersections, Quadrant Roadway (QR) intersections – are being built in the United States. (P)edestrian paths and bicycle facilities may cross through islands or take different routes than expected. These new designs are likely to require additional information for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians as well as better accommodations for pedestrians and bicyclists, including pedestrians with disabilities.”

Search YouTube for any of those intersection types an you’re likely to find a treasure trove of DOT porn explaining the virtues of these intersections for maximize traffic flow. All of these designs require navigation by pedestrians (and bicyclists in some situations) in what traffic engineers call “stages”. A two-stage crossing, for example, is something we’re all familiar width. It’s essentially a median or refuge island at a street crossing. Crossing to the next island is a stage.

I don’t dispute the safety benefit that refuge islands provide, especially at mid-block crossings containing Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons or Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons (formerly HAWK signals).  Allowing a pedestrian to navigate a mid-block crossing in two stages allow them to negotiate each direction of traffic separately and the traffic controls are exclusively regulated by the pedestrian.

The problem comes into play at traditional signalized intersections where the introduction of two-stage, three-stage and four-stage crossings have become commonplace. Be aware at a public meeting when a traffic engineers starts spouting the virtues of requiring pedestrians to do multi-stage crossing. It’s like the Wise Man who was carrying the myrrh: “Oh…gee…thanks. Can you find out where the other dude got the gold and bring me some of that?”

While islands do break the visual field of the intersection and allow pedestrians to navigate across one vehicular traffic movement at time, traffic engineers routinely use them to increase pedestrian delay, especially for disabled people, older adults, and young children that have walk speeds slower than the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) minimum rate of 3.5 feet per second that is used to time pedestrian signals.

Two-Stage Pedestrian Crossing Schematic from FHWA

The Federal Highway Administration, in its guidance for signalized intersections, chose some interesting language to admit that two-stage crossings discriminate against those who cross at a slower pace.

• “Potential Benefits: Medians of moderate width can allow pedestrians to cross in one or two stages, depending on ability.” (Marxist much?)

The schematic drawing shows “Separate pedestrian phases,” which means they likely don’t want to give a lot of green signal time to the parallel street crossing (typically called the minor street), so they don’t give pedestrians enough time to cross in one signal phase. This maximizes vehicle throughput for the “major street” (the four-lane road in this drawing).

“Hey, granny, you don’t walk fast enough to meet our goals for vehicle throughput, so we’ll stick you in the middle for another 3 minutes. Deal with it.” That’s when she got run over by the reindeer.

This video shows a person feeling they must run across the intersection because the traffic engineers viewed the two-stage crossing as more of an opportunity to limit cycle lengths for side street than to provide refuge for people. I captured it in Pleasant Hill, Iowa, along a highway managed by Iowa DOT.

Behold, the 5-Stage Crossing!
That brings us to the spiked eggnog part of this. The NCHRP study is looking at intersection concepts that make two-stage crossings look like a piece of fruitcake. Take three minutes to watch this video and you’ll understand. Hit the sauce while you’re at it.

This shows how the traffic engineering profession has reached a new level of absurdity. Much of the language in the actual survey (link now dead) framed five-stage crossings as some type of virtue for people who walk. A five-stage crossing is just an antiseptic for engineers to tell pedestrians “Prepare to wait even longer at our already-absurd intersections.”

If we are at a point where 5-stage crossings are consider an option, then that means we need to start to show DOTs they must move toward over/underpasses that provide the ultimate protection while not creating excessive delay (Las Vegas Boulevard-style pedestrian overpasses or some Dutch-style treatments). I’m normally opposed to pedestrian overpasses, but the reason those along Las Vegas Boulevard aren’t as punitive to pedestrian crossing distance and time compared to traditional pedestrian overpasses is they have escalators, stairs, and elevators, rather than a maze of ramps. The result is the time for pedestrians to cross is minimized and may actually be shorter than them having to wait through a traditional traffic signal cycle.

If they can spend the massive amounts of money to build these intersections, then spending a bit more so pedestrians and bicyclists don’t have to navigate a car-centric hellscape seems within reason if the engineers studying and designing these truly care about safety.

The engineers look at safety at these intersection through the lens of reducing conflict points between motorists and pedestrians. That’s definitely a valid point when compared to a conventional 7-lane by 7-lane intersection.

Pedestrian Level of Service and Value of Time
The problem is they fail to consider the value of a pedestrian’s time. Which is funny, because they love to talk about how many seconds they shave off a commute and use that compute a “value of time saved” dollar figure to woo elected officials and the public into spending billions on these crazy designs.

In failing to consider a pedestrian’s time, they’ve also failed to consider FHWA’s own published guidance related to pedestrian delay and safety.

If you’ve ever been involved in public meetings or on steering committees with traffic engineers you’ll hear merrily caroling about vehicle level of service. Use the phrase “pedestrian level of service” with your local traffic engineer and you’re likely to get a confused puppy dog head tilt.

The same folks at FHWA who developed the guidance for vehicle level of service also have a series of guidelines for pedestrian and bicyclist level of service. The module to run pedestrian or bicyclist level of service is in the exact same software packages they use to run vehicle level of service analysis.

For purposes of multi-stage pedestrian crossings FHWA looks at pedestrian level of service through the lens of average delay experienced by a pedestrian when waiting to cross. They cite research that found that “safety–motivated pedestrian control signals at signalized intersections may actually reduce safety by encouraging noncompliance to avoid the ‘largely unnecessary delay imposed’ on pedestrians.”

The table below shows different levels of service based on average pedestrian delay at the intersection. Average delay means the average time it takes a pedestrian to get a walk signal once arriving at the intersection. The right column is important as the studies found that longer pedestrian wait times, especially those longer than 40 seconds, leads to high or very high pedestrian noncompliance. This means pedestrians may ignore the WALK signal, or may attempt to shoot a gap in traffic, or may choose to cross elsewhere along the corridor but not at an intersection. Think about how many times you’ve waited more than two or three minutes to cross an intersection. That means the engineers forced pedestrian level of service “F” on you, a level of service “F” that many engineers would refer to as “failing” when vehicle traffic was measured through that same lens.

Pedestrian Level of Service as a function of average delay.

(Aside: One of my favorite lines in this pedestrian level of service section by FHWA is this one: “Indeed, despite the legal precedence of pedestrians over vehicles in the crosswalk, Virkler found that vehicles occasionally occupy a portion of the crosswalk during the pedestrian phase.” Thanks, Sherlock!)

Now think back to the five-stage crossing shown in that video. There’s a strong likelihood that, if implemented, the traffic signal cycle lengths will leave a pedestrian stranded in two or three of those islands to wait through another cycle length. Earlier in my career I looked more closely at one of these crossings of a Median U-turn (MUT) street in Chapel Hill, NC and found the average time to cross was more than three minutes, including nearly two minutes stranded in the median flanked by loud, high speed traffic.

I’ll reserve judgment on the research itself until it’s published. I know some of the people working on the project. They’re good people and solid researchers. I sent them a lengthy set of comments that are consistent with this post. We’ll see what happens.

My fear is they’re co-opted by the notion that since DOTs are already building these absurd intersections we need put as much lipstick on the pig as possible. Instead, let’s hit the reset button, truly account for pedestrian-related science on these matters, and realize once we reach this level of absurdity in intersection design we must fully separate pedestrians and bicyclists in meaningful ways.

Previous Posts in the 12 Days of Safety Myths Series:

On the 4th day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me…Shared responsibility!

The 12 Days of Safety Myths
December 13, 2018
by Don Kostelec

A child, all of 100 pounds, is mowed down by a person driving a 4,500-pound pickup truck. What will you likely hear from police officers, highway safety engineers, Governors Highway Safety Association, and state DOTs? “Now, remember, children, safety is a shared responsibility!”

Bull pucky.

Shared responsibility on the road isn’t a valid expectation of people who walk and bike until they are given equal consideration in road design and equal opportunity to move safely throughout the system.

Hot off the presses this week is this shared responsibility, victim-blaming spot featuring the Pennsylvania DOT and law enforcement in the Harrisburg area. It’s probably the worse example of overt victim-blaming I’ve seen. The media sops it up like a dog that hasn’t eaten in a month.

The media can’t be bothered to interview someone who actually walks or bikes to get somewhere. The story recites out-dated public right-of-way laws that were developed in an era when motordom was exerting its lobbying influence on the highway safety realm. They attempt to show balance in the headline by mentioning motorists but the story is heavily slanted toward blaming pedestrians. A cop cites anecdata, saying pedestrians are almost always at fault, most likely derived from interviewing drivers after they kill pedestrians, who then have no ability to defend themselves.

Origins
Admittedly, I’m still trying to piece together the history of the “safety is a shared responsibility” mantra. Peter Norton’s book Fighting Traffic, chronicles the underlying movements of motordom that led to the car-dominated set of road design standards and laws we have today. These efforts of the early 20th century worked to eliminate anything other than cars from the use of roadways. The entire effort was intended to make someone other than the motorist look responsible for the carnage caused by the automobile, knowing that if cars had a bad reputation for safety they could never been mass-marketed the way automakers needed them to be. Despite early outcry over the prevalence of motor killings, by the 1930s attitudes had shifted, as Norton writes:

• “The car had already cleaned up its once bloody reputation in cities, less by killing fewer people than by enlisting others to share the responsibility for the carnage.”

In seeking to find how this morphed into traffic safety doctrine, I asked the twitterverse to help me find the history. In bits and pieces over the years I’ve heard that it went full throttle with the automobile insurance industry’s desire to absolve policyholders of responsibility and shift blame to the vulnerable road users. It is a way to keep policy costs low and deflect from the carnage their clients cause.

A clue emerged when @bettybarc0de did a search for “safety is a shared responsibility” through Google Ngram, which charts the frequency of phrases by the timeframe in which they are used. The 1970s seem to the time in which the use of the phrase accelerated.

In looking up the history of compulsory automobile insurance I found that our modern-day requirements became prevalent in the 1970s. Automobile owners prior to then had some requirements regarding financial responsibility but it wasn’t like our current compulsory insurance framework that became the standard among states during this timeframe.

This may explain the connection between use of the phrase and scheming by the auto insurance industry. Finding out more is on my to-do list.

Physics & Human Nature Suggest Otherwise
It easy to comprehend how shared responsibility could be a rational expectation between two motor vehicles of similar mass, speed capabilities, and built-in safety features. That’s a place where the automobile insurance industry has a point. It’s kinda like two college students sharing responsibility for academic performance in the same class. Or two pedestrians negotiating the same space on a sidewalk. They are equivalents in most respects.

I snapped the image in the graphic below while we were doing walk audit training in Clearfield, Utah. It was the end of a school day at a nearby middle school and these kids were walking along a state-managed route and attempting to cross this state-managed intersection. In a show of “right of might,” the driver of the modified pickup truck expressed his dominance on the roadway by encroaching on their space. (Search Bill Schulteiss’ great hashtag #AmbassadorsOfSharedResponbility to see more great examples)

I oftentimes caption this picture as “Go ahead and cross, children, I dare you. The signal says WALK!”  (fades out to the tune of “Walk” by Pantera.). I’d conceptualized this graphic like you would a boxing match the Tale of the Tape. The goal is to point out how the basic physics of this situation prove the “safety is a shared responsibility” to be a ill-informed postulation.

Let’s start with the mass of the two objects that are expected to share this responsibility. One is at least 4,500 pounds and produces 81,000 joules at 20 mph. The others weigh 100 pounds each, producing 40 joules at 3 mph. Joules are a measurement of kinetic energy based on a function of weight and mass. It’s the transfer of kinetic energy that kills people in a crash.

The catastrophic consequences of these two objects colliding is compounded by traffic engineering practices where roads undergo detailed design for the exclusive comfort and speed of the 4,500-pound object. Traffic signals are timed to maximize their efficiency and ensure that average operating speed is as high as possible, especially on state-managed routes like this one.

The driver is allowed, by law, to raise the profile of the vehicle so it makes the impact zone upon a pedestrian higher on the body and almost ensuring the collision occurs in the torso or head region instead of on the legs. The exerts more force on more vulnerable sections of the body and pulls the victim underneath the vehicle.

Nothing in the engineering of this roadway or the modifications to this truck suggests the driver shares any responsibility. That perspective is what’s lacking in the Harrisburg story I cited at the start of this post.

“Well, those kids need to know they could die if hit by that car, that’s why they share the responsibility!” That’s the grunt reply that active transportation advocates get when they try to point out these basic facts of physics and vehicle characteristics.

That’s when I turn to the research. The table below is from the report Improving Pedestrian Safety at Unsignalized Crossings  and derived from a Florida DOT pedestrian safety handbook.

Just read through the table. As you read it, repeat the mantra “safety is a shared responsibility” after each bullet point.  As much as we may try, there is no way we can educate human nature out of children to get them to magically conform to the inconsistent elements of our traffic laws.

The report also characterizes walking abilities of older adults:

• They have difficulty in selecting safe crossing situations in continuously changing complex traffic situations, likely because of deficits in perception and cognitive abilities, as well as ineffectual visual scanning, limitations in time sharing, and inability to ignore irrelevant stimuli.
• They have difficulty in assessing the speed of approaching vehicles, thus misjudging when it is safe to cross the road.
• They have slower reaction time and decision making.
• Those with arthritis may have restricted head and neck mobility as well as difficulty walking.

Even the AASHTO Guide for the Planning, Design, and Operation of Pedestrian Facilities, which is referenced 30 times in the latest 2018 publication of the 1,048-page AASHTO Green Book, aligns with this report. The table included in this guide states:

AASHTO Pedestrian Guide, Section 2.2 Characteristics of Pedestrians (page 10)

Experts Should Know Better. They Don’t.
One of my favorite twitter spats of 2018 was between Angie Schmitt of Streetsblog USA and Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association.

Adkins is clearly sipping heavily from motordom’s shared responsibility keg.  Or is he just reflecting the lobbying influence on this organization?

I’ve long suspected GHSA is heavily influenced by the auto insurance industry and the state DOTs it lists as members (corporate sponsors shown in the image below).  Read through those two links to see the organizations that GHSA lists as its member. Adkins own bio admits as much, “Adkins has built partnerships with a variety of leading organizations in the automotive, insurance and consumer products industries.” It doesn’t mention him building partnerships with AmericaWalks or the League of American Bicyclists. It’s all about the motordom industry.

We know state DOTs are not inclined to put responsibility on the motorists that they spend billions to subsidize and promote. We seem to have a connection between the insurance industry and their desires to limit responsibility for motordom’s deadly tendencies.

If you read the rest of the exchange between Schmitt and Adkins you’ll see he does make some points about road engineering. That’s a good thing and I have seen GHSA’s messaging shift the last couple years to acknowledge the issues associated with road design and small hints that they understand their long-standing quest to perfect human behavior is horribly misguided. Watch closely and keep the pressure on GHSA and their state member DOTs.

GHSA’s Corporate Sponsors

Previous Posts in the 12 Days of Safety Myths Series: 

On the 3rd day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me…Lifesaving tchotchkes!

On the 2nd Day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me…Magical force field paint!

On the 1st day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me….bright, reflective vests!

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

We all love swag. No, not the kind that’s legal in Washington, Oregon, and elsewhere. I’m talking about the legal-everywhere swag you get when you register for conferences or approach a public agency’s tailgate tent at a local festival.

Who needs a safe systems approach when you can get to zero deaths with a thumb drive?

Have you ever considered how much money traffic safety offices spend on swag to promote their campaign? Who knew that “Toward Zero Deaths” thumb drives saved lives?

Maybe these highway safety offices are onto something I’m not aware of. Maybe spending $10,000 of taxpayers’ money on foreign plastic trinkets saves more lives than spending $10,000 on a RRFB. Being unsure, I decided to see if tchotchkes appeared in a simple search using the FHWA PEDSAFE Countermeasures selection system tool.

PEDSAFE is an online portal that allows you to see what types of safety measures can address specific road situations. I entered a few key characteristics of a roadway I cross frequently near my house: 4 lanes, school zone, speed limit less than 45 mph, minor arterial, transit service.

And the results…

Hmm. That’s weird. Street furniture. Sidewalks. Roadway lighting. Curb ramps. Better access to transit. Signs. No tchotchkes. Drat. 

Oh..wait…”Ped/Driver Education.” Tchotchkes must be listed under that one since nothing screams “TRAFFIC SAFETY EDUCATION!” better than a case of reusable grocery bags, right?

So, let’s click on education and see what it spits out:

• “There are several broad approaches to education that can be conducted with moderate resources. They include:
  1) highlighting pedestrian features when introducing new infrastructure;
  2) conducting internal campaigns within the organization to build staff support for pedestrian safety programs;
  3) incorporating pedestrian safety messages into public relations efforts;
  4) developing relationships with sister state agencies and statewide consumer groups; and
  5) marketing alternative travel modes.”

Foiled again. Maybe, just maybe, tchotchkes aren’t the magic bullet of a safe systems approach that some highway safety offices seem to think.

Well, maybe they’re beneficial to public involvement, if for nothing else than getting people in the door to learn about these education-based countermeasures. For that, I went to the the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Public Engagement Toolkit and its “searchable list of public engagement techniques with detailed descriptions” to see if it offers insights.

HOLY CRAP! There it is: Grocery Bags. 

Grocery Bags have five stars for both “Rating” and “Cost Effectiveness,” rivaled only by GIS Mapping and Handheld Instant Voting. I can only imagine the consultant contract gravy train that yielded this public involvement Yelp. 

Who needs to add an RRFB to a project when you can give people grocery bags instead?

But what about the kids, you ask? Grocery sacks are totes ridic. How about drawstring backpacks? Totes adorbs!

Plus, if the highway safety office is working on child pedestrian safety they must fulfill their NHTSA grant obligation and lecture children them about the virtues of bright, reflective clothing, right? Let’s make them reflective. Totes magotes!

Or maybe, just maybe, there’s a better idea…wait for it…black Toward Zero Deaths bag!!! Cray cray, you say? Well, at least it matches the bodybags pedestrians end up encased in because DOTs blew their traffic safety wad on useless tchotchkes instead of proven safety countermeasures.

Wear bright clothing, kids! Oh, here’s your black Toward Zero Deaths Bag.

Final thoughts: I feel bad for the people who work in state DOT traffic safety offices. They have a job where they are in no way integrated into the broader engineering efforts of that agency. They’re often stuck out in the modular offices on the edge of a DOT’s headquarters complex. They get their NHTSA grants, they buy their tchotchkes, they do the only thing they’re empowered to do within that organization. I’m sure there’s a highway safety official who got wind of true Vision Zero concepts, became excited because it deviates from the same, tired education-based beat-your-head-against-a-wall approaches, and then tried to pitch it to the engineers elsewhere in the DOT catacombs. I’m sure they were shot down, then returned to their modular unit cubicle to fill out their next grant application, or a job application. 

Other posts in the 12 Days of Safety Myths Series:

On the 2nd Day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me…Magical force field paint!

On the 1st day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me….bright, reflective vests!