Evaluation of pedestrian crossing safety at selected signalized intersections within Baghdad city.

Understanding pedestrian-vehicle interactions and individual responding behavior in mixed traffic situations is a difficult issue where time is of the essence the Pedestrians want to cross the road in comfort, convenience, and safety without having to risk a minor delay at signalized intersections crosswalk locations. The accuracy of accident facts is highly disputed in many developing countries the aims of the study included evaluation of pedestrian crossing safety behavior, identifying factors that influence pedestrian crossing speed at signalized intersections, and determining the influence varies with pedestrian characteristics: age, gender, trip purpose, environmental characteristics, vehicle characteristics and vehicular flow characteristics, land use type. Two sites in Baghdad city in Iraq were included in the study: A combination of field survey and researcher field notes were used to obtain the data at each site. A crossing with a high pedestrian density was chosen as the crosswalk for observation at each intersection. Traffic data on pedestrian crossing were collected for nine hours over three weeks, each week on three different days during peak hours for each of the signalized intersections locations. A total of 15645 pedestrians crossing from two signalized intersections crossings were observed and analyzed to determine the association of legal or illegal pedestrian crossing behavior, land use type, pedestrian characteristics, and other in situ factors with pedestrian crossing Safety. The study showed that density pedestrians crossing was affected by different days of the week. The analysis also showed that the age group of adult pedestrians of each gender was the predominant illegal crossing behavior, with a large disparity when compared to the legal crossing behavior. The results of the study showed males, on average, take less safe actions than females, that the behavior of illegal pedestrian crossing dominates over the behavior of legal pedestrian crossing for males, there is a greater uneven that reaches around 55% percent for illegal crossing compared to 45% percent for legal crossing. The study emphasizes the need to improve the transportation system through infrastructure improvements, and a better understanding of the factors that contribute to pedestrian fatalities could lead to the development of safer roadway facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]