United States Department of Transportation
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Evaluation of Pedestrian and Bicycle Engineering Countermeasures: Rectangular Rapid-Flashing Beacons, HAWKs, Sharrows, Crosswalk Markings, and the Development of an Evaluation Methods Report
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2011-04-01
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[PDF-715.57 KB]
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Abstract:This report documents a Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) project to quantify the effectiveness of selected engineering countermeasures to improve safety and operations for pedestrians and bicyclists. Through a combination of literature review, review of traffic control device experimental requests, practitioner panels, and meetings with FHWA, the research team identified four countermeasures for evaluation as well as the need for a handbook for practitioners conducting evaluations of traffic control devices. This report provides a brief summary of the evaluations of these four countermeasures and references to the full technical reports for each.
The rectangular rapid-flashing beacon (RRFB) device is a pedestrian-activated beacon system located at the roadside below pedestrian crosswalk signs. The study found that RRFBs produced an increase in yielding behavior at all 22 sites located in 3 cities (average yielding increased from 4 to 80 percent). Data collected over a 2-year follow-up period at 18 of these sites also documented the long-term maintenance of the improved yielding behavior produced by RRFBs. The High intensity Activated crossWalK (HAWK) (also known as the pedestrian hybrid beacon) consists of two red lenses above a single yellow lens. From the before-after evaluation that considered data for 21 HAWK sites and 102 unsignalized intersections, the following changes in crashes were found after HAWK installation: a 29 percent reduction in total crashes (statistically significant), a 15 percent reduction in severe crashes (not statistically significant), and a 69 percent reduction in total pedestrian crashes (statistically significant). Shared lane markings help convey to motorists and bicyclists that they must share the travel way on which they operate. A variety of hypotheses were examined, and a number of variables related to the interaction and spacing of bicycles and motor vehicles showed positive effects. Finally, the crosswalk marking study investigated the relative daytime and nighttime visibility of three crosswalk marking patterns. For the sites where markings were newly installed for this study, the detection distances to bar pairs and continental markings were similar, and they were statistically significantly longer than the detection distance to the transverse markings both during the day and at night. This report also summarizes the evaluation methods report, which provides information for traffic engineering practitioners on how to conduct evaluations of traffic control devices used by pedestrians and bicyclists.
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