The number of collisions involving vulnerable road users (VRU) has been on the rise in most urban areas across Canada. A substantial proportion of VRU collisions involve vehicle turning movement collisions at signalized intersections. To minimize the risk of turning collisions with VRUs at signalized intersections, road authorities have begun implementing and pilot testing several types of geometric and operational road safety countermeasures, including Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPI). LPIs provide pedestrians with a walk indication starting a few seconds prior to the corresponding vehicular green signal.
This research project was completed through the Transport Canada Enhanced Road Safety Transfer Payment Program. The project used an innovative and emerging video analytics tool to facilitate the evaluation of the safety effectiveness of LPIs without having to wait several years to collect a sufficiently large sample size of collisions involving VRUs. To complete this project, True North Safety Group partnered with Transoft Solutions for the conflict data processing, and with the municipalities of Durham, Guelph, and Oakville, for the pilot testing of LPIs at 14 intersections.
The results of this study represent valuable information for road authorities to determine if they should continue implementing LPIs on their road network and determine the preferred designs and locations to maximize safety benefits, and ultimately reduce the number of fatal and injury collisions.