| Summary |
Yi-Shan Yang, 2007,06
Institute of Traffic and Transportation National Chiao Tung University
Elementary school students who mainly walk to schools are the medium- or high-risk accident groups. In particular, the students could be involved in an accident due to their own poor judgment or drivers’ errors especially in crowded traffic environment. Consequently, it has been an important issue of safely crossing roads for elementary school students. To resolve this issue, the research analyzed the crossing time of elementary school students and explored the possible affecting factors. The students of Gu Ting Elementary School were chosen for observation, and their behaviors crossing two adjacent crosswalks were analyzed and compared.
The two adjacent crosswalks are identical in terms of geometry; yet, one of them is of right-turn conflicts and the other is not. The statistical analysis showed several interesting phenomena. First, students significantly spent more time while crossing the crosswalk with right-turn conflicts than the other crosswalk. This indicated that the right-turn conflicts did affect the crossing behaviors of elementary school students. That is, students may perceive threats and would walk faster on the crosswalk with traffic conflicts. Moreover, girls are generally of better awareness than boys. Taller students significantly spend less time on crossing crosswalks; a crossing with teachers’ protection significantly spend less time than that without teachers’ protection. Finally, it was also found that when the pedestrian signal starts flashing, elementary school students tend to spend less time on crossing with the countdown of green time. |
