In our society the hurry and the competition to arrive first is continuously present in the mobility. This is specially related to drivers, who not only have difficulties to respect the urban speed limits, but also force the amber and part of the red light in order to arrive earlier to the next light signal – where in many cases they will have to wait never-the-less. This has a clear effect on traffic safety, and creates a still worse problem for pedestrians, because of their minor protection against wounds. So, a 34 % of the killed in urban traffic in Catalunya are pedestrians even if their participation among the total road users involved in accidents only rises to 9 %. To get better conditions for the pedestrians in our cities we need to know more about road user behavior as a general and studies must be elaborated including all transport modes. No projects for new streets or redesign of existing should be defined without disposal of data for all the actual or future users. Only then, it will be possible to achieve the right equilibrium between road users. In many parts of our towns there is also an important struggle for the time in the light signals and for achieving a higher commercial speeds; not only for drivers of cars and motorcycles but also for pedestrians. All of them like to get to their destination a little earlier. Traffic safety suffers this attitude and therefore about a 52 % of all personal injury accidents in urban areas in Catalunya occur in intersections. A total of 17 % of urban personal injury accidents involve pedestrians. The number of pedestrians injured in intersections is also of importance, so in the Catalan cities a 44 % of injured pedestrians suffer their accidents in intersections. It has been estimated that the risk for a pedestrian walking one-kilometer is more than three times that of a car driver in the Catalan cities. It is therefore important to investigate the reasons related to these pedestrian accidents. It has been observed, during the last decades, that the need for discipline at light signal intersections – especially in the Barcelona urban area – is of importance. Therefore, the Catalan Association for Pedestrian Rights (Catalunya Camina) in collaboration with the Spanish Accident Prevention Association, the Barcelona Municipality and the County of Barcelona have worked on an investigation on behavior of car and motorbike drivers and of pedestrians in traffic light controlled intersections. Measurements of obedience of the red (and amber) traffic lights have been made in 13 intersections in Barcelona City and in 10 intersections in 7 medium towns in the region. For the 3 user groups, measurements of total number of users, drivers and pedestrians, who start to cross before the light is green and continue on amber and red after green, have been carried out. The results and proposals for actions are presented in this paper. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting