A recent study by University of Calgary economists Arvind
Magesan and Sacha Kapoor investigated the effects of the city of Toronto
installing crosswalk-count-down timer lights at 1,800 intersections. The timers did lower the number of accidents
involving pedestrians; however, the study indicates that the timers actually increased collisions
between cars. The increase in car
accidents was due to the fact that the timers are visible to both pedestrians
and automobiles approaching the intersections and there were more rear-end
accidents caused by the approaching motorist speeding up to get through the
intersections. Intersections that had
been previously considered "safe intersections" became more dangerous
for motorists. The study found that at
busy congested intersections the traffic is moving too slowly for motorist to
accelerate through the intersection based on the count-down-timer; however, at less busy intersections when there is only one or
two cars ahead of the motorist viewing the count-down clock, that trailing motorist would speed up during the last few seconds making rear-end collisions
more prevalent.
In their conclusion, the study’s authors suggest that the
cross-walk timers should be redesigned to give only an audio countdown so that
approaching automobiles cannot see or hear how much time is left to get through
the intersection but pedestrians can continue to benefit from the increased
safety of knowing how much time there is to get across the street safely.
The cities of Ann Arbor, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek,and Brighton, Michigan have installed these types of countdown timers to increase pedestrian safety. Perhaps these Michigan cities should rethink and redesign
their count-down cross-walk timers to keep all users of city intersections
safe.
