Traffic Tech #310: Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Resource Guide |
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The Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Resource Guide was prepared for highway safety professionals and others who are proactive in developing or directing bicycle and pedestrian safety programs at the state or community level. It provides a compilation of existing and proposed countermeasures that can be used by a variety of implementers to help solve a wide range of bicycle and pedestrian safety problems.
The Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Resource Guide is an update and combination of two previously produced guides—one for bicycle and one for pedestrian safety countermeasures. The original bicycle guide was sponsored by both NHTSA and FHWA and was produced in CD-ROM format in 1998. It was widely distributed and well received. The original pedestrian guide was sponsored by NHTSA and produced in 1998 in the same format as the bicycle guide. With the ever-increasing production of new safety publications, both guides became outdated. Rather than produce two new guides, NHTSA decided the contents of the two guides should be updated and combined into a single file suitable for distribution as a CD-ROM.
The contractor, Dunlap & Associates, Inc., initially examined the existing guides to identify individuals and organizations that produced or provided countermeasures cited. Contact with these organizations confirmed the availability of the existing countermeasures and the accuracy of the information provided for each. It also served to identify new countermeasure products that could be added to the guide. Contact was made with hundreds of highway safety professionals to request copies of new countermeasures and materials they find useful and to obtain ideas for needed countermeasures.
A summary was prepared for each existing countermeasure considered to be safety-related. For each one of these, the guide includes the following information: a summary description, the format, sponsor, where the countermeasure can be obtained, its availability and cost, and date of publication. A set of countermeasures were also proposed by the contractor. For each of these, a media form is suggested, a summary description is provided, and the major points to be covered are listed.
The guide identifies 40 pedestrian problem areas, 40 bicycle problem areas, 15 different implementer groups, and specific countermeasures that might help each implementer in reducing the various problems.
The resource guide is divided into two sections—one for bicyclists and one for pedestrians. Each has three major dimensions: problem areas, implementers, and format/use of the countermeasure. The highway safety professional can initiate a search on any one of the three dimensions. The problem areas include bicyclist and pedestrian errors (e.g., wrong-way riding, intersection dash), motorist errors (e.g., right turns on red, excessive speed), impairment by alcohol, visibility and conspicuity, geometrics and operations, high injury severity, target groups, and awareness. The user can also access the countermeasure database by the potential implementer (e.g., engineering, health care, schools, media, law enforcement, and others) as well as by countermeasure type (e.g., training materials, videos, brochures, flyers, booklets, CD-ROMs, kits, reports/guides). Separate lists are provided for publications available completely or partially in Spanish.
How To Order
Copies of the Guide are available in CD format or by download from NHTSA’s website.
For more information, contact Marvin Levy, Ph.D., by e-mail at marvin.levy@dot.gov.
Traffic Tech is published to disseminate information about traffic safety programs, including evaluations, innovative programs, and new publications. Feel free to copy it as you wish. If you would like to receive a copy, contact Patricia Ellison-Potter, Ph.D., editor, by fax at 202-366-7096, or by e‑mail at patricia.ellison-potter@nhtsa.dot.gov.