Analysing Pedestrian Safety in School Zones Based on Behaviour Risk

Generally, one of the most vulnerable road user categories that could be recognized is pedestrians, thus their susceptibility to high injury severities in road vehicle crashes. In Sri Lanka, the risk of pedestrian safety near school zones has increased rapidly with the growth of areas such as infrastructure development, socio-economic development, etc. This research was focused to address the pedestrian safety issues based on behaviour risk of school children near Colombo zone. The data collection for this study was conducted under three categories which include: a road inventory data collection, road crash data collection and a pedestrian road risk behaviour data collection. Moreover, two factors were given priority: the user behaviour at pedestrian crossings and user behaviour at sidewalks. The data collection on the pedestrian behaviour risk was done manually, focusing on school uniformed children. Past road crash data from the Sri Lankan Traffic Police database were also used to estimate normalized values. Behaviour risk value for each school zone was estimated in order to identify whether any safety improvements were required. Vulnerability for not using sidewalks was 15% on average and the vulnerability for not using pedestrian crossings was less than 10% for all school gates considered in both morning and afternoon times. Results indicated that the vulnerability risk is low compared to studies found in literature.