Guidelines for the environmental adaptation of roads and their land-use frontages in the main street of Australian country towns and suburban shopping centres emphasise road safety as one of the goals. A speed profile along the road is achieved with traffic engineering measures to reduce the conflict between vehicles and pedestrians crossing that road. In the development of these guidelines research was undertaken into vehicle-pedestrian interaction, including video observations. A probabilistic risk model based on Bayes' law is applied to the accident risk to pedestrians crossing the road. The model with explanatory variables of traffic flow, speed and pedestrian crossing distance and time, is calibrated on data for main roads in urban areas (to represent the "before" situation) and for local roads to represent the situation after main street interventions. The model suggests the potential risk of an accident for a pedestrian to cross the main street (accident risk per million person-years) halves from about 8 to 4 with the redesigned road. Hypothetical data for one kilometre of road indicate that the reduction in pedestrian fatalities and severities per year may amount to a community benefit of over $6 million to offset the capital costs of main street treatments. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E205861.
Abstract