 Traffic accidents involving pedestrians on non-arterial roads |
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| Traffic accidents not only occur on arterial roads carrying heavy traffic, they also happen on non-arterial roads. It is said that more than half of all traffic accidents occur on non-arterial roads located mainly in residential neighborhoods. People feel a strong desire for traffic safety. A study of the locations and kinds of traffic accidents involving pedestrians that occurred on roads in urban area in 1997 (figure below) has shown that accidents on non-arterial roads often occur on single lane streets (on the roads between intersections), and that a relatively large number of these accidents are "collisions with car approaching from the front" or "collision with car approaching from behind" that are accidents involving automobiles approaching pedestrians from the front or rear as they walk along a road. In addition, traffic passing through residential neighborhoods and the rising speed of road traffic have caused many problems for pedestrians using non-arterial roads. These include making walking unpleasant, subjecting the people to noise and vibration, and lowering the quality of life in the neighborhoods. | |
 Traffic Accidents Involving Pedestrians on Roads (1997) |
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| Community zone improvement projects |
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| The formation of Community Zones has been promoted since 1996 as a way to prevent traffic accidents on these roads, restrict traffic passing through residential neighborhood, and to slow the traffic, in order to make it safer, more pleasant, and more convenient to use these non-arterial roads. A Community Zone has been defined as "A district integrated to a certain degree where wide area comprehensive traffic measures are implemented to make the district safer, more pleasant, and more convenient, that is located in a residential area where the movement of pedestrians must be a priority." | |
| Research by the Advanced Road Design and Safety
Division |
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| In a community zone 1) traffic restriction that indicates the boundaries
of the zone and traffic restrictions such as one-way streets are enforced
and 2) measures to lower speed such as humps and chokers (called physical
devices) are installed. The following figure shows these physical devices
categorized according to their characteristics.
The Advanced Road Design and Safety Division has studied and analyzed the speed reduction effects of these physical devices. The Division has performed experiments and has proposed [1] shapes of humps, [2] distance between humps, and [3] the shapes and intervals between chokers. |
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 Categories of physical devices |
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 Hump giving priority to busses |
 Hump combined with a crosswalk |
 Traffic experiment on a public road using temporary hump |
 Choker from one side |
 Choker from both sides |
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