If you are at all interested in pedestrian safety issues or are looking for possible funding for your traffic calming project, you should know about the federal Safe Routes To School (SRTS) program. The idea is to improve the ability for children to walk or ride their bikes to school. Not a bad idea for a generation that has gotten used to being chauffeured from one place to another. The program offers training, education, events and funding.

Of course, a big part of that funding goes towards grants that states can use to improve traffic safety. I recently came across an article that explained how the city of New Hope, Minnesota did just that.

With an SRTS grant of $31,200 the Minnesota Department of Transportation implemented a variety of actions to slow traffic around its Sunny Hollow Elementary School. Since the school is surrounded by busy streets, few of the students walk or bike to school. During the morning commute, local traffic is congested with parents driving to school in order to deliver their kids to the front of the building.

While a portion of the grant will be used for training and education, the majority of the funds will be used to purchase three radar speed signs. The signs will be installed next to current speed limit signs and are intended to remind drivers to check their own speed and make sure they are within the limits.

Sounds simple, but it works. A variety of government studies have shown that radar speed displays are particularly effective around neighborhood streets and school yards.

Next step? The city plans to apply for additional grants to fund similar projects near other elementary schools in the state. 

Truckee California, Atlanta Georgia and Winnipeg, Canada are a few of the latest cities to deploy radar speed signs in a big way. The growing acceptance of these traffic-calming displays is particularly noteworthy given the correlating decline in the popularity of speedbumps and radar speed cameras.

radar speed signs' increasing popularity

According to Sam Katz, the mayor of Winnipeg, their recent installation of seven solar-powered radar speed signs is “anything but a cash grab,” – one of the major concerns of Winnepeg citizens opposed to speed cameras. Studies show that radar speed signs are highly effective at slowing cars without being obtrusive or financially threatening (spelled t.i.c.k.e.t). Katz made it clear that none of the new displays will take pictures or be used to issue tickets.

In California, the city of Truckee took advantage of funding provided by the federal Safe Routes to School program to buy and install six flashing crosswalk signs and radar speed signs. The displays are being permanently mounted along a busy school route and are intended to be operational in time for the 2010-11 school year.

And then last year, residents of Wildwood, Georgia, a city just North of downtown Atlanta, used the data collected by a radar speed sign to convince local police that there was a major speeding problem around their local school zones. Surprising to many who analyzed follow up data, that the majority of speeders were local residents. This, however, coincides with findings of numerous traffic-calming studies and highlights one of the key reasons radar speed signs work so well. Most speeders are just distracted drivers. Radar speed signs are an unobtrusive way to redirect driver attention to their current driving conditions. And that doesn’t require photos or ticketing.

I CAME ACROSS A study by Safe Kids USA that looked at distracted drivers in school zones. While it’s no surprise that distracted drivers are more likely to cause or be involved in an accident, some of the specifics noted in the report were surprising to me. For instance:

Fact. Drivers using a phone are as likely to get in an accident as drunk drivers ( .08 blood alcohol content). 

Fact. Drivers dialing a phone are six times more likely to be involved in an accident. 

Fact. Drivers texting on their phones are 23 times more likely to be involved in an accident. 

Fact. Drivers talking on a phone are four times more likely to be in an accident.      

Fact. Harvard Center for Risk Analysis estimated that in 2003, cell phone use was a factor in 636,000 crashes, 12,000 major injuries and 2,600 deaths.

But this post isn’t about bashing cell phone use. It’s about the impact of driving distractions in general and what we can do about it to increase pedestrian safety.

In the Safe Kids study, trained observers were posted in school zones located in 15 states throughout the U.S. They observed each car that passed through the school zone, making note of the drivers’ sex, the type of cars they were driving and any marked evidence of driver distractions. Of the 41,426 total drivers observed, about 7,000 of them (1 in 6) were distracted by something – eating, reaching in back, talking on a phone etc.

Specific findings include:

• Cell phone use was the number one leading distracter 
• Men and woman drivers were abut equally distracted.
• Distracted drivers appeared more frequently in school zones without flashing lights.
• Drivers of SUVs, pickup trucks and other large vehicles tended to be distracted more than car drivers.
• Drivers not using their seat belts were 35% more likely to be distracted than those who did use seat belts.

Why does any of this matter? I suggest two reasons:

1. Distractions lead to more accidents as well as a higher severity of accidents when crashes do occur.       

2. Traffic calming methods that interrupt diver distractions during critical times (such as while passing through school zones( are particularly important in reducing accidents.

As the Safe Kids report points out, a distraction that takes the driver’s mind off of his or her driving environment can have a huge impact on accident avoidance. By the time you calculate how long it takes for a driver to see a child run into the street, for the brain to process the situation and for the driver to make a decision on how to avoid the hazard, a car traveling just 30 mph will have traveled about 33 feet. Once you add driver reaction time and the time it takes the car to stp, it has now traveled about 104 feet from when the danger was first spotted.

From Safe Kids USA

That’s on a dry road…with clear conditions…without driver distractions. For each second that the driver is distracted, you can add another 33 feet to that stopping distance.

Radar speed signs, variable speed limit signs and violation alert signs are all bout refocusing a driver’s attention away from distractions and back onto his or her own driving speed and road conditions. And they work.

A variety of government studies show that radar speedcheck signs are one of the most highly effective means of reducing accidents in school zones, work zones and other places where pedestrian safety is of particular concern.

And now we know why.

If interested, you can find a nice collection of links to many of these government traffic calming studies at www.informationdisplay.com.

FINDING THE RESOURCES for traffic safety programs is never a slam-dunk. Given today’s economy it’s gotten even harder. However, while many traffic safety programs are being eliminated, there are still places to find funding.

Therer are still SRTS grants available

One of the most popular and effective national programs offering traffic safety grants comes from Safe Routes To School. Launched in 2006, the program is all about encouraging kids to walk and ride their bikes to school. A first step in making this even plausible is ensuring that the routes they take are as safe as possible – and that means slowing cars. Safe Routes to School has a variety of active programs taking place across the entire U.S. with funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration. Most importantly, they offer grants to qualified applicants. A good first start is visiting their site at www.saferoutesinfo.org.

Even in today’s economy, there are a variety of local, state and federal government programs that may be able to help. These come and go and are often difficult to find, let alone apply for. That’s why Information Display Company has an expert ready to help. If you’re wondering what grants may be available for your specific location, you may want to send an e-mail to IDC’s grant coordinator at grantinformation@informationdisplay.com.

And if you’re courageous enough to do some research on your own, chances are, you’ll stumble across a variety of private corporate grants that may also work. A great example is one offered by State Farm Insurance, which offers charitable contributions to (among other groups) qualified educational institutions and governmental entities. Their grants are focused on three areas: safety, community development and education. You can find out more about the State Farm grant program at http://www.statefarm.com/about/part_spos/grants/cogrants.asp. Specific information about their upcoming 2010 programs should be available around the first of the year.

I HEARD A disturbing statistic a while back that I can’t seem to get out of my mind. Information Display Company had loaned some radar speed signs to Feet First, a great organization all about getting kids (and their parents) to walk rather than drive to and from school. One of Feet First’s directors told me that half of school children hit by cars in school zones are actually hit by parents of students at the same school. I would think that of all the drivers on the road during school hours, these drivers would be most cognoscente of the potential hazards and therefore the most cautious. Apparently not.

Then I came across a new report just put out by Safe Kids USA that might explain this phenomenon. The report, entitled Distracted Drivers In School Zones: A National Report, highlights some statistics regarding driving behavior – particularly in school zones. What they found was that school zone drivers are often distracted and distractions have a real impact on safe driving. Consider some of these statistics highlighted in the report:

• It takes about .25 seconds for an average driver to identify a road hazard (such as a child running out into the street)
• It takes another .25 seconds for the brain to process the situation
• And another .25 seconds for the driver to determine his/her course of action

As the report lays out, if the driver is traveling 30 mph in a school zone, his car will go 33 feet before he even reacts to the hazard.  THEN…

The car will travel another 33 feet by the time the driver applies the brakes…

and another 38 feet before the car actually stops.

Total braking distance from the moment the child is spotted till the car stops…104 feet.

That is IF the road is dry and IF visibility is clear and IF the driver is totally attentive.

On the other hand, if he or she is distracted  – say, by a cell phone call, or a GPS device, or a talk show host, or grooming, or kids in the back seat, or…Well, let’s just say, stopping distance can be greatly larger.

The Harvard Center of Risk Analysis estimates that, in 2003, cell phone use by drivers was a factor in 636,000 crashes involving 12,000 major injuries and 2,600 deaths. Now, add to this other distractions like eating or reaching for that CD cover under the seat.

One more quick bit of information. In 1999, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued a report that highlighted the impact that the speed of a car has on the severity of injuries once an accident does occur. According to the report, only 5 percent of pedestrians would die if hit by a car traveling 20 mph or less. This fatality rate jumps 8X – to 40 percent – when the car is traveling just 10 mph faster, and 80 percent when traveling 40 mph.

So if there was a way to slow drivers just a bit – say from 30 to 20 mph – while driving through a school zone AND a way to draw driver attention from distractions back to their own driving speed, we can make a real impact on the number of accidents and the severity of injuries that occur in school zones.

And that, in a nutshell, is the reason why studies show radar speed signs to be so effective at increasing pedestrian safety in school zones. Long after speed limit signs and school zone posting have become all but invisible to passing drivers, radar speed signs continue to grab driver attention and refocus attention away from distractions and back on their own driving speed.

I really like Feet First’s idea of getting our children back in the habit of walking and riding their bikes to school. I like it even better when I know we are doing all we can to increase pedestrian safety around school zones. The evidence clearly points us in the required direction – eliminating driver distractions and reducing speeds.

30+ radar speed signs in Bellevue, WA

Perhaps the most comprehensive field study on the effectiveness of radar speed signs was just conducted by the city of Bellevue, Washington. Results were so overwhelmingly positive that the city rewrote their own rulebook on when and how to use these traffic-calming displays.

Prior to the study, Bellevue city officials viewed radar speedcheck signs as a secondary fallback option for applications where speedbumps, traffic circles or other physical traffic calming measures just could not be installed. But that has changed. Due in most part to the results of their own study, Bellevue has now installed more than thirty permanently mounted radar speed displays around school zones, on neighborhood streets and other locations where speeding traffic is a concern – and in many cases, in locations where speedbumps might once have been employed.

Old habits are hard to break. It doesn’t take a scientist to conclude that a big obstruction in the street (speedbump) will tend to slow drivers, and so installing them has often been the knee-jerk response that many cities exhibit when speeding traffic becomes an issue. 

What simple observation may not show, however, are some of the signficiant drawbacks to speedbumps. Drivers, for instance, oftentimes increase their speed from bump to bump. Speedbumps slow fire trucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles and may increase traffic noise and present a hazard to bicyclists and handicap pedestrians.  The installation of speedbumps often result in simply shifting traffic from a main through route to quiet neighborhood side streets.

According to the Bellevue report, radar speed signs have a similar effect in slowing traffic, without the drawbacks associated with traffic calming road obstructions. Speedcheck signs have no effect on emergency vehicles or bicycles. They don’t cause increased traffic noise and they don’t cause damage to your automobile.

Perhaps most surprising to those following the Bellevue study is that the radar speedcheck signs continued to be effective over a long period of time. In some cases average traffic speeds continued to decrease years after the radar displays were first installed.

The Bellevue report not only provided evidence of the effectivness of radar speedcheck signs but also provided experienced recommendations on choosing and installing the displays. A review of these findings coming up in our next blog post.