The 12 Days of Safety Myths
December 11, 2018
by Don Kostelec

“A reminder to pedestrians and bicyclists that paint isn’t there to protect you.
It’s only there to absolve motorists if you deviate from it.”
– The wise, old sage of motordom, “Bob Gunderson”

We’ve all been there: A public meeting concerning your primary walking or bicycling route. You have expectations that things might be different this time with your local or state DOT. You hope for protected bike lanes or frequent, signalized pedestrian crossings; you know, everything the modern engineering guidance is pointing to with regard to safety. You leave with nothing more than a paint sample from Sherwin-Williams and a deep suspicion that the fumes from all the paint they promised was weakening their cognitive abilities. 

Paint = Instant Infrastructure (Image by @BoiseStreetDept)

If you try to counter the project engineer you get their version of a Jedi mind trick, a wave of the hand and a “No, the paint is safe infrastructure and it will protect you.”

The idea that paint is a solution for a safety issue is probably the single worst default position a designer can take. I look back on projects and plans I was involved with during my less-enlightened days and think, “I can’t believe I actually recommended a sharrow.” Or, “Why did I mention nothing more than adding a crosswalk?”

It doesn’t take too deep of a dive into prevailing design guidance and research to find language that discourages the use of paint as a standalone safety countermeasure. Even when paint is used in combination with other measure, the existence of paint can be the thing engineers and law enforcement point to if, as Bob Gunderson warns, you deviated from the paint. Albuquerque Police seem to believe in the magical force field power of paint. 

Crosswalks
The 2005 FHWA publication Safety Effects of Marked versus Unmarked Crosswalks at Uncontrolled Locations: Final Report and Recommended Guidelines had some pretty significant findings. This is one that @peatonx unearthed while assisting me on a Comprehensive Pedestrian Plan in North Carolina.

The 160-foot crossing on Oak Street in Forest City, North Carolina. You get nothing but paint, and the least effective crosswalk marking to boot!

• “The study results revealed that on two-lane roads, the presence of a marked crosswalk alone at an uncontrolled location was associated with no difference in pedestrian crash rate, compared to an unmarked crosswalk. Further, on multilane roads with traffic volumes above about 12,000 vehicles per day, having a marked crosswalk alone (without other substantial improvements) was associated with a higher pedestrian crash rate compared to an unmarked crosswalk.”

That was 13 years ago, yet take a walk anywhere in your community and you’re like to find dozens of examples of nothing more than some paint and a couple of signs. If a federal study on motor vehicle lanes had such stark conclusions you’d probably find engineers mobilizing millions to rectify the situations.

The engineering countermeasures recommended in the FHWA study include:

• Raised medians on multilane roads;
• Narrowing road or providing curb extensions;
• Traffic signals, where pedestrian volumes warrant it (don’t get me started on this one);
• Reducing vehicle travel lane widths to provide space for medians;
• Traditional traffic calming on lower volume, low speed streets;
• Adequate lighting;
• Tighter turn radii to slow vehicles;
• Using flashers, warning signs, and other active devices;
• Reducing the required widths on new streets in new areas.

It’s all there for you to use as you advocate for it. On that pedestrian plan, the DOT built a new state secondary road monstrosity and didn’t care enough for pedestrians to do something other than paint a couple of lines on a high speed arterial with a 160-foot pedestrian crossing between public housing and downtown (see pic). To date, NCDOT has done nothing with that horrendous crossing despite endorsing the town’s pedestrian plan in 2015.

Of course, we have to leave it to the traffic engineers to screw up the findings of the 2005 FHWA study. When MUTCD was updated in advance of its 2009 update it was intended to include the findings of the 2005 FHWA study. MUTCD Section 3B.18 – Crosswalk Markings states:

• “New marked crosswalks alone, without other measures designed to reduce traffic speeds, shorten crossing distances, enhance driver awareness of the crossing, and/or provide active warning of pedestrian presence, should not be installed across uncontrolled roadways where the speed limit exceeds 40 mph and either:

1. The roadway has four or more lanes of travel without a raised median or pedestrian refuge island and an ADT of 12,000 vehicles per day or greater; or

2. The roadway has four or more lanes of travel with a raised median or pedestrian refuge island and an ADT of 15,000 vehicles per day or greater.”

I put the “40 mph and either” in red because this is where the confusion starts among engineers, according to FHWA Safety Engineer Peter Eun. The language was not intended to be so specific in terms of meeting the two conditions: 40 mph and one of the two other circumstances. The language was to read “40 mph and/or either…” The result is designers still think this only applies to 40 mph streets and higher and they do nothing elsewhere. Mr. Eun says they hope to correct that in the upcoming MUTCD update.

Sharrows
The sharrow is probably the worst example of the false promise of paint: A horizontal sign on a road, backed by all the thoughts and prayers engineers can muster, all while they claim they can’t afford dedicated bike lanes for the safety for today’s bicyclists because they’re too busy widening roads for motorists that won’t exist until 2040.

A better sharrow design?
(Image @QAGreenways)

We could beat the sharrow horse until it’s dead, dead, dead, but the Bicycle Lobby has already assumed that critical role.

That’s thoughts and prayers approach to sharrows is prevalent across DOT literature, as in the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Complete Streets Planning and Design Guidelines: “In streets where bicycle lanes cannot be accommodated, shared lanes provide an alternative to bicycle lanes…Shared-lane markings increase a motorist’s awareness of the 
presence of cyclists (by raising the motorists’ expectation that they will encounter cyclists).”

They’re definitely not alone in that thinking.

Wes Marshall, an engineer and academic at CU-Denver, is perhaps my favorite transportation researcher. He takes on topics others seem unwilling to address. In doing research with Chicago data, Marshall and Company found streets where sharrows were “installed” resulted in less of decrease in crashes than streets that had no sharrows installed over the same time period.

The paper states, “As sharrows do not provide designated space for bicyclists and do not enhance the overall bicycle network, all cities should (as many already have) begin to consider sharrows simply as signage as opposed to actual infrastructure.”

(Why Chicago? Bicyclist dooring crashes are not allowed to be processed through typical crash reporting protocols because they happen with a stationary vehicle. Most crash reporting protocols require a collision with a moving motor vehicle, which is a good one to remember when someone tries to play the “bicyclists have the same rights and responsibilities” game. Chicago is one of the few places where a dooring crash is allowed to be treated the same as other crashes, so they have useful data for purposes of evaluating the impacts of sharrows.) 

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

The 12 Days of Safety Myths
December 10, 2018
by Don Kostelec
Featured image above by Jonathan Fertig

You know your traffic safety officers are hitting the spiked eggnog early when they start rolling out their finger-wagging campaigns about pedestrians and bicyclists fashion choices. This misguided, yet all-too-common element, of traffic safety campaigns is probably the one that does the most to drive advocates batty.

Reflective pedestrian sign, stating the state’s law and using a crosswalk, is still mowed down by a driver.

I’m convinced that traffic safety offices, some of which are now being re-branded under some type of “Zero Fatalities” or “Toward Zero Deaths” effort, do nothing but take whatever flows downhill from organizations like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)  and Governors Highway Safety Administration (GHSA). These two organizations are historically vested in the “perfecting human behavior through education and enforcement” is the answer to highway deaths (more on that later on in the 12 Days of Safety Myths series). Their messaging also contains a heavy “windshield bias”–a condition brought on by those who travel primarily by automobile but are tasked with developing safety initiatives for those outside a car.

These biases are revealed in their campaigns and related materials that tell people who walk and bike what they should wear, without any consideration for an individuals circumstances, the lack of proper roadway lighting to illuminate the marked and unmarked crosswalks, or the likely inadequacy of a motorist’s headlights.

Headlights
Let’s start with this one since the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has been doing some great research on this topic. By design, automobile headlights are angled downward so they do not aim straight into an oncoming driver’s eyes. The left headlamp is also designed to not illuminate the street ahead as much as the right headlamp, for the same concern over shining it in at an oncoming driver. IIHS’s recent study found that many vehicle manufacturers require purchasers to buy a high-end trim package to get headlights rated as “good.” Less than 25% of 2018 model year cars have headlights rated as “good;” more than 25% are rated as “poor.”

So, while you are quick to see traffic safety offices and their campaigns telling pedestrians and bicyclists to wear bright clothing, what you don’t see is those same offices telling drivers to make sure they buy vehicles with adequate headlights. If a highway safety office is as balanced as they claim to be, then it’s a reasonable request that they also remind motorists of things like this.

The IIHS manager of active safety testing David Aylor said in the IIHS release, ““Good headlights also improve the chances that attentive drivers will see pedestrians in time to slow down for them.” This position is bolstered by NTSB’s report findings in 2018.

Then there’s the issue of at what distance does a driver see a pedestrian or bicyclist given their headlight characteristics. The common graphics I’ve found show that they aim downward at a rate of 4 inches below the top line of the headlights for every 30 feet of distance from the vehicle. For a passenger car, the top line of the headlights is well below the waistline of a person walking or bicycling; it’s slightly higher for SUVs and large pickups. The graphic below shows a crude calculation of this taper height compared to a person’s waist and knee height (I went to the street near my office and found a passenger car and high profile vehicle to measure their headlamp height).

So, the question is: Given the proven inadequacies of headlights, especially for areas higher on a person’s body, can a driver even see a reflective vest on a person is crossing the road ahead?

Pedestrians
On the occasions where traffic safety people will actually engage in a debate over this, the common refrain I hear is “Well, it’s just common sense.” That’s when I know their windshield bias is strong and they have little perspective on the situations that pedestrians commonly find themselves encountering, both in terms of roadway design and the order of things in life. It also shows a bias among those fortunate enough to work a standard, weekday work schedule.

Next time you go out to eat, take a close look at what the servers are required to wear. Do the same when checking into a hotel. The service industry is largely comprised of dark clothing requirements. A quick online search reveals most low-wage service sector jobs require black or dark clothing in the dress code.  Workers oftentimes have to pay for their own uniforms, which limits their ability to make extra expenditures on reflective gear.  Many service sector workers end their shift late at night and must walk, bike or get to transit in their work attire, many on streets now shown to have poor lighting and contributing to rising pedestrian fatality rates.

Or imagine this scenario: You’re willing to work some extra shifts but you dressed for the daytime shift today because that’s what was on the schedule. A co-worker on night shift calls in sick. The manager comes to you and asks “Can you stay and work the evening shift, someone called in sick?” Who would respond by saying, “Oh, sorry, I forgot my light and reflective vest”? Yet, that seems to be in the same line of thinking that traffic safety offices would prefer.

Messaging to drivers from ICBC in British Columbia.

The other scenario that reveals the windshield bias is pedestrian crashes in parking lots. I credit Marty Schmoll for being the first one I saw to point this out: Given the large number of pedestrian crashes that occur in parking lots, if traffic safety officials really cared about pedestrian visibility then why don’t they recommend drivers carry a vest in their trunk to wear while walking from their parking space to the front door of the store. Of course, you never see that in the traffic safety campaigns.

A more productive safety message, done in combination with strong reminders to drivers about their own headlights and needing to watch for people on foot, would be to help pedestrians understand that they are not as visible at night and to be extra cautious at those hours, as all road users should be.

Bicyclists
While I strongly believe the finger-wagging at pedestrians to be bright and reflective is horribly misguided and biased, I do understand the efforts to help bicyclists ensure they are visible. Bicyclists are traveling within the same road prism as the motorists, oftentimes sharing the lanes. It’s important to be visible to a driver approaching you from either direction, which is why lights or reflectors are mandatory on the front and back of bicycles (IMO, lights should be a mandatory element of bicycle manufacturing given we have the technologies to keep them charged without the use of batteries).

The reflective vest recommendation is where the traffic safety messaging veers from reality. It’s the same reason I pointed out above concerning headlights. A bicyclist riding at night, and in a hunched position, is not revealing the reflective qualities of vest to the motorist.

One of my favorite memes (Origin unknown; if you know, let me know and I’ll give due credit.)

In a recent discussion with Molly North, a CU-Denver graduate student and former Bike Denver Executive Director, they tested the reflective vest theory in different lighting situations and found that having reflective elements and lights below the waist was most visible to motorists.

“I wear lights on my feet and pedals, and keep things reflective below the waist,” said North when we spoke at the Vision Zero Cities conference in New York last month.

Given the physics of everything, that makes sense and it certainly changed my perspective on riding at night. A highway safety campaign aimed at helping people who bike and drive understand these issues would be appropriate, rather than defaulting to the same, tired reflective vest messaging we constantly see.

in the end, I’d much rather see these highway safety offices working with local advocates and experts in pedestrian and bicyclist safety to develop safety campaigns. I also want them sending messages to their engineering counterparts on how road design greatly influences visibility.