Right from the beginning of car transport development pedestrians have been paid little attention; with the growing number of vehicles and roads for these vehicles their position is becoming even worse. Unequal position of pedestrians is also emphasized by their significantly greater vulnerability in the road traffic as compared to other road users. These circumstances have been highlighted more frequently only in recent years, when suitable solutions have been searched on the worldwide scale particularly with regard to making especially the roads in towns safer and friendlier to pedestrians. The objective of this study is to map legal bases for searching optimum outputs within the limits of the Czech legal order. We also consider our obligation to mitigate a special legal regime of walking away from roads, i.e. pedestrian rules for the movement in protected natural areas and in the countryside. It should be stated that the legal regulations regarding the position of pedestrians in the Czech Republic are at the level of the European standards both in the sphere of active and passive safety. Particularly recently it has become obvious in the whole society that each road user is starting to understand in a better way the importance of enhanced safety of pedestrians. This was mainly helped to by relatively new legal regulations encompassing some essential elements of pedestrian protection, such as the introduction of an absolute right of way of pedestrians, decreased speed limits of vehicles in towns, and also reduced tolerance to drinking and driving. This work has introduced a certain legal framework, which defines a mutually relatively well-balanced system of rights and obligations of road users increasingly focused on the protection of pedestrians as relatively most vulnerable road users. Nevertheless, any legal arrangement only provides a certain degree of formal protection, and to achieve the highest possible safety of pedestrians a strong appeal to each individual is necessary. For the covering abstract see ITRD E138091. This paper is available from http://www.ictct.org/workshops/07-Beijing/82Schmeidler377390.pdf.
Samenvatting