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In urban streets, pedestrians compete with vehicles for right-of-way. In some situations, it may be very challenging for pedestrians to deal with complex, sometimes hostile, traffic conflicts, especially in urban areas. This paper provides an exploratory analysis of pedestrian behavior on four types of mid-blocks crossing facilities in the city of Fortaleza, Brazil. The analysis was based on descriptive statistics and logistic regression models of variables related to signal control, facilities, and pedestrian characteristics and behavior. The models considered the following binary variables: (i) crossing vs. no crossing during pedestrian red phase; (ii) driver yielded vs. did not yield while pedestrian crossing; (iii) normal vs. aggressive/risked pedestrian behavior while crossing. A total of 2,400 crossings were considered in this study. The results show that, in general, the increase of traffic demand was related to easier crossings. Moreover, the presence of raised crosswalks increased in about 20 times the chances of a driver yielding to pedestrians in comparison to the marked-only crosswalk. In addition, the presence of mechanisms that facilitate pedestrian crossings such as raised crosswalks or traffic signals reduced the number of aggressive/risked crossings considerably.

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O advento de novas tecnologias de monitoramento e controle de tráfego permite o desenvolvimento de estudos mais robustos de segurança viária a partir da obtenção de dados de tráfego desagregados em intervalos de 1 a 15 minutos ou até em tempo real. Entretanto, visando relacionar os acidentes às suas condições precursoras, a aplicação desse tipo de dado demanda um melhor conhecimento sobre a precisão do horário de reportagem dos acidentes. Este trabalho tem como objetivo apresentar uma análise entre horários reportados dos acidentes e perturbações nas condições de fluxo em interseções semaforizadas em Fortaleza, Brasil. As perturbações na corrente de tráfego foram detectadas a partir de oscilações na velocidade com a aplicação de algoritmo que compara as velocidades em condições "típicas" e "com acidentes" e com a validação visual das detecções. A avaliação de 291 acidentes mostrou uma diferença média de 20 minutos (dp = 23 min) entre o horário de reportagem do acidente e o momento da detecção da perturbação na velocidade. Esse achado indica a importância da investigação da precisão dos horários de reportagem dos acidentes de trânsito, principalmente ao desenvolver estudos de segurança viária em escala temporal desagregada.

Direct demand (DD) models are used to estimate pedestrian volumes at intersections as a function of readily available variables, such as land use and socioeconomic features. The objectives of this paper are: (1) to identify and qualitatively assess existing DD models in the literature; and (2) to evaluate the spatial transferability of DD models for estimating annual average daily pedestrian traffic (AADPT) at signalized intersections. Six DD models developed from jurisdictions with varying characteristics were selected for spatial transferability assessment. The models were applied to three jurisdictions (Milton, Canada; Pima County, U.S.; and Downtown Toronto, Canada) that had notable differences in the level of pedestrian activity, land use, and socioeconomics. Observed pedestrian volumes were obtained for sites in each jurisdiction. The DD models performed considerably differently across jurisdictions. Five of the models performed reasonably well for Milton, a jurisdiction that is comparable to those considered in the calibration of the selected DD models and that shares characteristics with many suburban Canadian and U.S. jurisdictions. Overall, the applications for Pima County and Downtown Toronto, which have extremely low and high pedestrian volumes, respectively, provided poor accuracy. This paper demonstrated the potential for transferring existing DD models to other jurisdictions; but also identified the clear need for further research to improve the spatial transferability of DD models.