In 2002, the Federal Highway Administration awarded grants to the cities of San Francisco, Las Vegas and Miami to examine and map out their pedestrian crashes and develop a plan for deploying and evaluating various pedestrian safety countermeasures in high crash “zones” and locations. The purpose of the project was to demonstrate how a city could improve pedestrian safety by performing a detailed analysis of its pedestrian crash problem, identifying and evaluating high crash locations, observing factors such as driver and pedestrian behavior, and deploying various lower cost countermeasures tailored to the site. An independent evaluation was also conducted to compare the countermeasure deployment in the three cities. Some of the countermeasures evaluated include:

Automated (video) detection of pedestrians to extend crossing time, flashing beacons, “in sreet” pedestrian signs, “Turning Traffic Must Yield to Pedestrians” signs, median refuge islands, pedestrian push button acknowledgement, LED “No Turn on Red” signs, reduce minimum green time (hot button), “smart” crosswalk lighting, and pedestrian countdown signals.

• San Francisco

• Miami

• Las Vegas

• System Impact Report for Pedestrian Safety Engineering and ITS-Based Countermeasures Program for Reducing Pedestrian Fatalities, Injury Conflicts, and Other Surrogate Measures.

• Evaluating Pedestrian Safety Countermeasures: This article by Tamara Redmon, published in the March/April 2011 Edition of Public Roads Magazine, provides an overview of the Pedestrian Safety Countermeasure Deployment Project.