Check crosswalks, reduce accidents
Pedestrian crossings are important for road safety. The city of Zurich completed an initial systematic recording of all pedestrian crossings and their defects at the end of 2017. The aim is to reduce the number of accidents.
At pedestrian crossings, the "weakest" meet the "strongest" road users. That is why it is a concern of the city of Zurich to make pedestrian crossings as safe as possible. Because: Every year, 100 people have an accident at the so-called crosswalk. The number of accidents has been constant for years, as the city writes. The goal must be to exclude (inadequate) infrastructure as the cause of accidents.
Over a period of about two and a half years, employees of the Traffic Department have collected information on pedestrian crossings both in the office and on site. "We now know that there are exactly 2901 pedestrian crossings," explained city councilor Richard Wolff at a media conference, "we have around 900,000 individual data." This is, for example, information on the condition of the markings, the size of the waiting areas or the number of protective islands.
Remove visual obstructions and install signalization
The analysis of the data shows which crosswalks have deficits. At certain locations, for example, pedestrians and drivers can only see each other very late. Objects such as trees, poles, green growth, construction site barriers, etc. obstruct visibility. There are also obstructions to visibility caused by parking spaces. Or markings are damaged or worn. But deficiencies in construction that need to be remedied were also identified. These include sidewalk curbs that make it difficult for people with walking disabilities to get around, or the lack of protective islands between lanes in the same direction of travel.
"Numerous immediate measures, such as additional "pedestrian crossing location" signaling, new markings or lowering of sidewalks, have already been implemented or will follow soon," Wolff explained. "Other adjustments, such as missing protective islands, can only be implemented as part of construction projects." In the city of Zurich, 87 pedestrian crossings lack a protective island, statistics show.
Source: City of Zurich, Traffic department
More on the subject of accident statistics here
