Understanding pedestrian red-light violation: Exploration of the impact of traffic engineering and traffic conditions

The design of the geometry and traffic controls at signalised junctions is often focused on the level of service offered to drivers and rarely takes into consideration the level of service offered to pedestrians. This results in pedestrian adopting illegal and unsafe behaviours – e.g. red light violation. This study aimed to identify the elements of signalised junction design that are critical in pedestrian safety by analysing how they affect pedestrian behaviour. Both traffic engineering design (e.g. junction geometry) and associated traffic conditions (e.g. traffic speed) were investigated. Over 6500 observations had been made at 10 signalised junctions in the city centre of Montreal, Canada. The 10 junctions were selected to ensure that a variety of environments, road users and junction designs were covered. Results show that the presence of a countdown display has the most significant and positive impact on pedestrian behaviour. Results also suggest that pedestrians cross at the red light when they feel confident about their ability to judge whether they can use the available traffic gaps to cross safely the street.