Improving Pedestrian Safety at Night (2025)
Chapter: Chapter 3: Findings and Applications
CHAPTER 3
Findings and Applications
3.1 Triangulation of Phase II Research Findings
This research included multiple studies using a variety of methods to provide insights into pedestrian safety at night and a strong foundation for the content of the companion document, Strategies to Improve Pedestrian Safety at Night: A Guide. Across methods, our findings were generally consistent, corroborating one another or prior research. Where our findings diverged from each other or prior research, they provided important insights to contextualize guidance and ultimately increase its usefulness. The following sections synthesize the key findings of our research and organize them by the three elements of FHWA’s Safe System Project-Based Alignment Framework (2024): exposure, likelihood, and safety. These elements are briefly defined as:
- Exposure – the presence or potential presence of someone to be involved in a crash, and the length of time they are exposed,
- Likelihood – elements that impact the probability of crash occurrence, and
- Severity – factors that impact the potential for a severe outcome.
Higher roadway speeds and related design and operations elements create consistent pedestrian risk
The macro-level analysis found that higher posted speeds and multilane roadways were significantly associated with pedestrian fatalities. In addition to these roadway design and operations factors, designation as an arterial or freeway was significantly related to pedestrian risk. Roadways with these characteristics in urban and suburban areas are designed to carry large amounts of traffic in peak hours but are then overbuilt for nighttime conditions, allowing and even encouraging higher speeds when drivers cannot see as well or as far. The result increased pedestrian exposure to traffic (long crossings), increased likelihood that a crash will occur (high vehicle volumes and design that communicates driver priority), and increased injury severity potential (high speeds).
Prior research has found that these factors are even more likely to be associated with pedestrian fatalities in darkness than in daylight, with risk rising as the posted speed limit rises (Sanders et al., 2022). The micro-level analysis supported these findings – even though our sites were restricted to arterial and primary collector roadways, the number of lanes was significantly associated with being a location where a pedestrian was fatally or severely injured in darkness. These findings are also supported by the driving simulator research, which found that drivers were able to identify pedestrians and yield more quickly at 25 mph than at 40 mph. Driver speed was also associated with simulator crashes: nine of the ten crashes that occurred in the simulator occurred at a posted speed of 40 mph. Furthermore, when the focus group participants discussed routinely driving above the speed limit, they stated that changes in roadway design would generally be required for them to change their behavior in the absence of speed enforcement.
Strategies to address higher driver speeds and the design and operational elements that communicate and foster those speeds are important to improve pedestrian safety and reduce the likelihood of a severe pedestrian injury.
The Guide underscores the importance of achieving safe speeds as part of an SSA, including the critical role of roadway design in communicating and reinforcing speed and driver priority. The Guide also includes strategies and options to support reducing speed, such as design strategies, traffic calming, and automated enforcement.
Darkness is a critical risk factor for pedestrian safety
The macro-level analysis, driver simulation, and focus groups underscored that darkness itself increases the likelihood of crash occurrence. Given that the average human receives 90 percent of their information visually, darkness significantly negatively impacts the ability to detect and react to stimuli in time. Darkness is a less serious limitation at slower speeds, when any delay in detection equates to less roadway covered and the vehicle needs less space to come to a stop. These factors reduce the likelihood of a crash at all, and any injury that does occur will likely be less severe because of the reduced energy transfer. In a higher-speed situation in darkness, however, the vehicle covers more space during the detection delay while also needing more space to stop. Higher speeds also result in a higher injury severity, with the result that any delay in detection at a higher speed could result in death for the person walking.
Enhancing pedestrian visibility through lighting is therefore a critical countermeasure to improve safety at night. Vehicle headlights help illuminate the roadway, as do streetlights. Our driving simulator research found that drivers were less stressed and able to react more quickly in lit conditions than in darkness. The focus group participants also voiced support for streetlights, both for traffic safety and personal safety reasons. People who walked felt more assured that drivers would see them, and people who drove felt more confident that they would see people walking; drivers also supported lighting to identify other roadway hazards, such as potholes.
Lighting alone will not solve the pedestrian safety problem at night. The data from the macro-level analysis are clear that pedestrians are killed in both dark, lit conditions and dark, unlit conditions. Additionally, lighting was positively associated with the likelihood that a location was the site of a fatal or severe pedestrian crash in darkness in the micro-level analysis. While the latter result is likely related to exposure – e.g., pedestrians may seek to cross at a lit corner over an unlit corner, or that lighting may be more likely to be provided along certain roadways or in certain contexts (e.g., urban v. rural), it nonetheless underscores that underlying risk factors like high-speed, multilane roadways will not become safe simply with the addition of street lighting. Efforts to improve pedestrian safety in darkness through enhanced visibility and lighting are valuable and will be more effective if combined with efforts to reduce injury severity potential by slowing driver speeds.
The Guide acknowledges the importance of lighting for pedestrian safety, provides design considerations about lighting, and links to important comprehensive lighting guidelines, but also highlights the importance of addressing safety via safe roadway design and safe speeds, per the Safe System Approach (SSA).
Countermeasures are an important part of the traffic safety solution
As described above, our research found that street lighting is necessary but not sufficient for pedestrian safety in higher-risk contexts. To reduce the likelihood and potential severity of a pedestrian crash at night, transportation practitioners could employ countermeasures to slow driver speed and catch their attention in darkness. In the simulation experiment, drivers identified the crosswalk and slowed
more quickly when a rectangular rapid flashing beacon (RRFB) or high-visibility crosswalk markings were present. Simulation participants also reported finding the countermeasures helpful in the post-driving survey. The finding for RRFBs was stronger in dark, unlit conditions, underscoring the importance of using a lighting device – if not a signal – to catch drivers’ attention in otherwise dark conditions, particularly at higher speeds. These findings corroborate past research on the effectiveness of lighted beacons for slowing drivers (Fitzpatrick and Park 2021). Additionally, participants in our focus groups who drove described driving more slowly and looking out for pedestrians where they expected pedestrians to be present – a key concept of self-explaining roadways (Tice et al., 2024) that supports the idea that countermeasures can influence driver behavior by drawing their attention.
The focus group participants also provided important insights into the effectiveness – or lack thereof – of certain countermeasures in some contexts. In particular, focus group participants who walked in Los Angeles related some unease with pedestrian hybrid beacons (PHBs), which they attributed to several factors. First, they did not believe that drivers understood how PHBs worked, and therefore worried that drivers might not always stop. Second, many participants explained that while some drivers might stop for pedestrians to cross, it is also common for at least one driver and/or lane of traffic not to stop, making the crossing experience unnerving and potentially unsafe. Last, focus group participants mentioned that some PHBs did not work consistently when they were installed, which was confusing for both pedestrians and drivers (resulting in some non-compliance) and still affects people’s faith in the PHBs when attempting to cross. These experiences combined to create a general distrust of driver compliance at PHBs; participants also reflected a general distrust of compliance at RRFBs. This lack of trust resulted in participants not going out of their way to use these countermeasures, thus further diminishing their effectiveness. These experiences underscore the importance of education and engagement campaigns to help drivers and pedestrians understand how to use these countermeasures.
The Guide helps practitioners select from a range of proven and promising countermeasures within various contexts to increase pedestrian visibility at night, as well as provide insights into how to ensure that these treatments meet their potential.
Understanding the context is critical to reducing pedestrian exposure to risk
Another key finding came from the micro-level analysis, which examined exclusively higher-risk locations and found significant positive correlations between the likelihood of a location having experienced a fatal or severe pedestrian crash in darkness and land uses that attract pedestrian traffic, such as convenience stores, liquor stores, grocery stores, and low-density commercial uses. These findings likely reflect unmeasured exposure to some degree, but also the reality that these land uses attract pedestrian traffic along these high-risk roadways – and therefore that pedestrians should be accommodated and better protected in these situations. These findings corroborate findings from prior research (e.g., Ferenchak and Abadi 2021; Dumbaugh et al. 2023) and underscore the importance of providing safe crossings near pedestrian attractors to reduce pedestrian exposure to risk. While the presence of transit and high-density housing were not significant in the multivariate model, they were significantly associated with case status in the bivariate model. In a Safe System Approach, addressing these land uses could help improve safety for all roadway users.
The Guide helps practitioners understand the importance of land use and context for pedestrian safety when selecting countermeasures to create safe roadways and safe speeds, following best practice and in keeping with the SSA.
Nighttime behaviors exacerbate risk by increasing the likelihood of a crash
The macro-level analysis found several behavioral factors associated with pedestrian fatalities at night, including driver and pedestrian intoxication, pedestrian drug use, driver hit-and-run (associated with intoxication or other illegal behavior), distraction, and speed. Substance use and distraction not only increase the likelihood of a crash by impairing judgment and attention, but they also increase the potential of a severe outcome by delaying detection and reaction time. Hit-and-run crashes are often severe by their nature, as are speeding-related crashes, and all of these behaviors are more common at night (National Center for Statistics and Analysis 2024a, 2024b; Cambridge Mobile Telematics 2024; Benson et al. 2017), resulting in compounding risks due to drivers’ inability to see well in darkness. Several of these factors also featured prominently in the literature review given their established association with pedestrian fatalities.
Additionally, nearly all focus group participants admitted to distracted driving, despite knowing it was risky – a trend mirrored nationally (Cambridge Mobile Telematics 2024). The pervasiveness of these issues underscores the importance of treating them through systemic measures such as technology that prohibits intoxicated, distracted, and speeding driving, comprehensive transit service that provides an alternative to intoxicated travel, and broader societal supports for substance abuse. While broader societal efforts are beyond the purview of this project’s design guidance, the measures to address speed through the design and operations strategies in the Guide will help to reduce the likelihood of other risky driving behaviors and mitigate the potential for a severe injury when a crash occurs.
The Guide acknowledges the negative impact of these behaviors on pedestrian safety at night, provides insights into the ways that they can be addressed through design and operational strategies, and provides discussion about how they can be more directly targeted through innovations in safe vehicles and policy related to safe roadway users.
Traffic safety by demographic groups
In the micro-level analysis, we found that locations where a fatal or severe pedestrian crash occurred were significantly associated with a higher percentage of Black or Hispanic/Latino residents. The macro-level analysis found that Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, Pacific Islander, and Hispanic/Latino pedestrians were significantly more likely to have been killed in darkness than in daylight compared to White pedestrians who are not Hispanic/Latino. These findings corroborate what we found in the literature review.
The focus groups revealed that the women in the groups, and particularly the women of color, were far more concerned about their safety in darkness than the men in the groups. Additionally, the driving simulator data support that darker-skinned pedestrians are at an elevated risk, all else equal: drivers took longer to identify the darker-skinned pedestrian than the lighter-skinned pedestrian in the simulator. This research adds to the body of scholarship showing that Black, Hispanic/Latino, Pacific Islander, and Native American communities experience higher pedestrian risk. Efforts to improve pedestrian infrastructure and reduce pedestrian exposure on high-risk roadways will reduce the likelihood and potential severity of crashes.
Additionally, ongoing research and analysis has found higher traffic risk for unhoused people in some communities (OR Walks 2021; Bernhardt and Kockelman 2021). This association is due to a mixture of societal and personal factors that vary across places and range from a greater willingness for cities to tolerate encampments along high-risk DOT roadways to co-occurring risk factors in some cases, like substance abuse or mental illness. While addressing houselessness is beyond the purview of this research,
transportation practitioners can use design and operational strategies to manage speed and create safer, more resilient environments for populations facing these risk factors.
The Guide describes sociodemographic differences in pedestrian risk and helps practitioners consider multiple factors to work toward lower risk for all pedestrians throughout the design process.
Conclusion
Together, these findings illustrate the important role of speed and roadway design in contributing to a safe or unsafe environment for people to walk along and cross a roadway in darkness. They also underscore the importance of context in design and operational choices. The companion guide builds on these key findings to create integrated, data- and research-driven guidance to help transportation professionals implement proven and promising countermeasures to improve pedestrian safety in darkness. To help practitioners and the public understand the pedestrian risks at night, this project developed infographics that can be utilized by transportation agencies and practitioners. The infographics are located in Appendix F.
