Installing guardrails to deter diagonal road-crossing can reduce pedestrian casualties by 80%, an accident prevention engineer has claimed.
Douglas Stewart, who has decades of experience as a road engineer, claims that removing old guardrails to ‘de-clutter’ streets leaves roads more dangerous because it makes it easier for pedestrians to cross roads diagonally.
The conventional wisdom is that railing protects pedestrians by preventing them from crossing at unsafe places, or by guiding them to a designated crossing.
But Stewart claimed the main benefit came from discouraging diagonal crossing, where people ‘are effectively blind to one side’ because peripheral vision extended little beyond 1800. This was why, he asserted, short guardrails and those only installed on one side of a road were ineffective, as they might actually encourage diagonal road-crossing. The guardrails also had to be of the newer ‘high-visibility’ type, where pedestrians – particularly child pedestrians – and drivers could easily see each other.
Stewart highlighted the ‘significantly improved’ transparency of his new design, trademarked Visiflex. But Stewart’s conclusions, based on sites in Aberdeen and Wolverhampton, were disputed within the industry this week.
Dr Ian Harrison, Devon County Council deputy environment director, argued that ‘in many urban areas, where traffic speeds are moderate, removal of guardrails and other street furniture can improve a driver’s vision of pedestrians, and vice versa’.
The absence of guardrails did not in itself ‘encourage pedestrians to cross the road diagonally’. How a pedestrian chose to cross a road depended on their assessment of vehicle flows and speeds, said Harrison. Mike Ashworth, County Surveyors’ Society traffic and safety chair, at Derbyshire, said guardrails had been ‘rendered redundant and inappropriate for road safety purposes’ where speeds had been lowered to around 20mph.
However, high-visibility guardrails were still a ‘tool in the box’ where traffic flow and speeds presented clear risks. ‘In many instances, highway authorities did put up too much guard railing where visibility was restricted,’ he added. Living Streets said guardrails ‘have absolutely no place on residential roads and community high streets’. Results from schemes where guardrails had been removed – most famously on Kensington High Street, where pedestrian casualties were cut by 59% – showed they were ‘a relic from a bygone age’.
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