A study of traffic-safety in residential areas has been undertaken at ONSER in 1979-1980, by a team including an engineer/town-planner and a research psychologist/sociologist. Three areas, where the dominant form of land-use is residence, and which are fairly well delimited by natural barriers or obvious differences in the urban landscape, were considered for in depth analysis. The study included the reading and interpreting of the police reports of all accidents occurring in one year, followed by periods of observation on each accident-location. A series of 250 interviews were also carried out, to find out about the residents' attitude towards safety, and their opinions as to their neighbourhood and the possible improvements. The results of this work were used to find out the most specific safety problems in residential areas (broadly defined as above), and to design new improvement principles, meant at the same time to increase safety and bring more satisfaction to the residents as to the comfort and practicability of their environment. The paper describes the methodology used, and gives the main findings concerning safety, the residents' opinions, and acceptable improvement measures for each category of urban roads considered. (A)
Samenvatting