Evaluating the Effects of Geometric Design and Traffic Condition on Pedestrian Violations at Signalized Intersections

According to the fact that one of the most significant reasons for pedestrian accidents in signalized intersections is the crossing violation of pedestrian, therefore, the evaluation and investigation of factors affecting pedestrian violations have always been a concern for traffic safety activists. The aim of this study was to evaluate the external factors affecting pedestrian violations, especially factors related to geometric design and traffic condition. The behavior of 1590 pedestrians was captured in 10 crosswalks of 6 intersections in Mashhad, and the effect of 15 unique variables on each pedestrian was evaluated. Binary Logistic Regression used for data analysis by using SPSS software. Finally, the variables of the number of pedestrians on the side, the number of violating pedestrians on the side, the waiting time, the gap of the vehicle, the length of the crosswalk, the width of the median and the time of the pedestrian light was found to be effective on the pedestrian decision to cross. The analysis shows that increasing number of pedestrians would reduce the probability of violation 20.7%. Moreover, if the number of violating escorting pedestrians increases, the probability of violation would increase 81.4%. The increase of one unit in “pedestrian’s waiting time”, “length of the crosswalk”, “width of median” would result in violation reduction of 13.2%, 18.5%, and 14.6%, respectively. On the other hand, an increase of one unit in “vehicles’ headway” and “duration of red light” would increase the violations 17.8% and 2.8%, respectively.