The title said it all in this tweet from NJ Advance Media, host of NJ.com and publisher of the Star-Ledger and other New Jersey media sites: “City narrows roads because you won’t stop texting while walking“.
But the correct reframing of this should instead be: “City narrows crossing distance at intersection to make pedestrians safer”.
This whole thing about pedestrians being crashed into by vehicle drivers because they’re looking at their phones is a bit odd. Drivers of vehicles hit, maim and kill pedestrians. What are the three main reasons for this? Driver speed, driver impairment (drugs/alcohol), and driver distraction.
In the United States, pedestrian mortalities have increased over the last thirty years, and there has not been a major campaign to change driver behaviour or awareness of the vulnerability of active transportation users.
Alissa Walker, urbanism editor at Curbed, tackles the pedestrian distraction fable head on:
Compelling new research reveals that pedestrians probably aren’t texting themselves to death. While the term ‘distracted walking’ has become a way to pin the blame on pedestrians for supposedly looking at their devices instead of the sidewalk, there hasn’t been much evidence provided to prove smartphone-using walkers are at fault when collisions occur. In fact, most states don’t even include pedestrian behavior as a factor in crash reports.
Among research conducted in this area, engineering professors at Northern Arizona University looked at the use of crosswalks in New York City and Flagstaff, Arizona, by over 3,000 individuals; of those in the study, 86.5 per cent did not show any distracted type of behaviour. The study also found that most pedestrians walk within the demarcated pedestrian crossing lines, with only 16 per cent walking outside them.
Among all demographic groups, men were most likely to commit violations while walking. People using phones were slightly more likely to travel outside the crosswalk, but not more likely to cross against the ‘Walk’ signal.
And what about driver distraction? The Centre for Disease Control has a study showing that 31 per cent of American drivers said they had texted while driving in the last 30 days. Texting while driving has been compared to driving while impaired because of the level of distraction and safety risk.
Educating pedestrians or, in the case of Honolulu, fining a pedestrian for even looking at a cell phone while crossing a street is not going to make streets safer. Driver distraction needs to be criminalized, not the pedestrian use of crosswalks.
Price Tags has already written about ‘leading pedestrian intervals’ being used successfully in New York City; for a nominal cost per intersection (about $1,200), crossing signals are reprogrammed to give pedestrians a seven to ten second start to crossing the road before motor vehicle traffic is allowed to proceed through the crosswalk.
The use of 104 leading pedestrian intervals in New York City resulted in a 40 per cent decline in pedestrian and cyclist injuries, and a decline in actual deaths.
To be serious about encouraging walkability and pedestrian safety, it’s time to seriously consider policies — as well as actual street design solutions — that prioritize walkers over cars.
Here’s a YouTube video on how the Leading Pedestrian Interval works.
