Cycling safer than walking
The Ambulance Service of New South Wales was concerned after a particularly nasty spate of accidents at the beginning of this year and acted to remind the public of the forgotten problem on our roads – the high number of accidents involving pedestrians that result in death or serious injury.
And for good reason. According to the RTA, an average of 90 pedestrians are killed in accidents each year in NSW alone – that’s about 20 per cent of the annual state road toll. It’s about the same as the motorcycle death rate, and six times higher than that for cyclists.
An estimated 85 per cent of pedestrian accidents happen in cities and more than half of all pedestrian fatalities occur in darkness or at dusk. Darkness is also associated with high alcohol use and alcohol-affected pedestrian accidents.
Children, older pedestrians and alcohol-affected pedestrians are the most vulnerable, with pedestrian accidents being a major cause of death for children under the age of 10.
Pedestrians over 65 represent one third of Australia’s pedestrian deaths. As the population ages and older people take up walking to get around and for health reasons, we can expect these statistics to get worse.
The Report on Pedestrian Safety released last year by the RTA stated that a major source of frustration for all pedestrians, particularly in metropolitan settings, was the phasing of walk time at signalised intersections: “The relatively short time allowed for pedestrians to cross the road limits pedestrian movement and acts to increase risk taking when walking.”
In its submission to the report, the City of Sydney Council echoed those sentiments, indicating that pedestrians were frustrated with the time it takes for traffic lights to change to green and consider the time allowed to cross a street safely to be too short: “Many pedestrians especially under crowded city conditions cannot cross safely in the time allowed.”
A major City of Sydney study into public spaces and public life, conducted by Gehl Architects, reinforced this view, concluding that the major focus of urban planning so far has been to facilitate car movements at the expense of pedestrian traffic.
The study also identified waiting time at crossings as a substantial problem and added that pedestrians take risks to gain better access.
North Sydney Council actually succeeded in getting two seconds added to the pedestrian phase of traffic lights at an intersection on the Pacific Highway, but only after lengthy negotiations with the RTA following a pedestrian fatality at the crossing.
The risk to pedestrians is made worse by narrow and cluttered footpaths and lack of adequate planning for people in wheelchairs, the elderly, parents with prams and the sight impaired. These problems will increase with the greying of the population over the next few decades.
The condition of our roads is also a problem in many areas. Badly designed and maintained roads, footpaths and kerbs are dangerous for all pedestrian groups, but particularly for the elderly and the disabled.
And poor compliance to road rules by drivers speeding and pedestrians taking needless risks is made worse by lack of general public understanding. According to Dr Julie Hatfield of the NSW Injury Risk Management Centre at the University of NSW, confusion about right-of-way rules contributes significantly to pedestrian crashes.
Dr Hatfield has called for a review of pedestrian crossing types and hopes to improve road users’ awareness of the rules at all crossings.
“There is confusion about right-of-way at brick-paved sections of road and pedestrian refuges that are not marked to indicate a crossing,” she said.
“In Australia, neither of these installations operates as a marked crossing but many people think they do.”
With fatalities on the increase and pressure to reduce our environmental footprint growing, the time has come to re-examine our planning priorities to make walking and cycling safer and more enjoyable options.
