A strategy for pedestrian safety in Iran

Pedestrian traffic accidents constitute a major part of all traffic accidents in Iran. Studies based on the year 2007 data, have revealed that out of a total of 27567 traffic accident fatalities, 6258(22.7 percent) have been pedestrians.

This is why the present study has been done in Transportation Research Institute to find practical pedestrian safety measures, having in mind how critical pedestrian traffic safety is. To do field studies with the objective of finding and classifying pedestrian traffic safety problems, two provinces of Gilan and Mazandran were selected for case studies in order to present the solutions and strategies for the improvement of pedestrian traffic safety. These provinces were selected because roadsides are full of different and irregular activities, traffic volume and speed is high, many people live along roadsides and commute all the time.

Considering the vastness of roads network in these provinces, and because of concentrating our studies on areas having various pedestrian safety problems, we first defined some indexes for the selection of proper areas and then prioritized them. After a more precise study of prioritized areas, necessary object setting for improvement of pedestrian safety purposes was carried out.

This way, necessary strategies to meet predefined targets were determined by classifying pedestrian?s safety problems and defining safety targets for each category of problems; and, for each strategy, safety improvement measures, under three titles, named engineering, education and enforcement measures were presented.