To defuse all sorts of risks and conflicts, which come about, when pedestrians cross a road, it is possible to arrange pedestrian crossings. Pedestrian crossings are on the one hand for example zebra crossings and pedestrian crossings with fight signals (e.g. pelican crossings, toucan crossings, puffin crossings), at which pedestrians have the priority while crossing a road, and on the other side crossing aids, which only clarify through structural design the most favourable crossing place without priority for pedestrians. Previous investigations via determination of preconditions normally had the destination to determine generally depending on the volume of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, which pedestrian crossing is reasonable in the case of a specific traffic volume. This approach was also pursued in the guidelines "Richtlinien for die Anlage und Ausstattung von Fussgängerüberwegen (R-FGÜ 84)" published in 1984, in which the today valid preconditions with limiting value are determined. The R-FGÜ 84 control the use of zebra crossings with minimum and with maximum value of traffic volume in peak hour. However, these values of traffic volume are controversial in practice. The findings won in a literature analysis showed, that different authors recognize on the one hand, that a traffic situation compared to an other situation can not only be separate by the traffic volume. On the other hand, the authors pronounced again as recommendation values of traffic volume as general criteria. Subsequent, the findings went with it, that the traffic situations are influenced by frequentable, structural, environment related and by other components as well as different cooperation, lost again. So, within the frame of this work, the empirical investigations for the traffic safety and for the traffic flow are based on an integrated approach. In addition to frequentable components (e.g. traffic volume, vehicle speed), it became considered other parameters, like structural criteria (e.g. design form and standard, combination with or without crossing aids), environment related features (e.g. properties of the areas and of the roads) and other ones (e.g. typ of pedestrian traffic an traffic composition), which all can influence the traffic situation at zebra crossings. The results of the empirical investigations for the traffic safety and for the traffic flow, that based emphatically on an accident analysis and situation analysis, showed for the recommendations of preconditions for zebra crossings connections and trends between the features influencing the traffic situation at zebra crossings, the traffic safety and the behaviour of the road users. However, it also became clear, that traffic situations at zebra crossings can not be integrated into an universal scheme at any time because of the complexity of the influence features. If this fact is of course, a better traffic safety to zebra crossings and a greater acceptance of these pedestrian crossings is achieved best, if someone elaborate individual case related street space drafts with integrated conceptions, with which the element zebra crossing and all other draft elements are include into the locally available frequentable, structural and environment relaxed factors. (A)
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