RE-EXAMINING 'FUNCTION PV' FOR DECIDING PEDESTRIAN CROSSING FACILITY

Abstract

Fatalities to pedestrians constitute 22% of total deaths on roads. In many countries, this proportion is as big as 60 %. The pedestrian crashes are both predictable and preventable. The major amount of accidents of pedestrians occurs when there is no crossing control measure is provided. It has been observed that significant number of pedestrian accidents occur in presence of pedestrian crossing facilities too. It happens because of high speeds of vehicles, in-sufficient sight distances to both pedestrians and vehicle drivers due to obstructions on road side, signal jumping by pedestrians and vehicles, improper design of the facility, complete stopping of drivers. The PV2 threshold values are not provided for when a particular type of crossing is to be installed. There should be specific limiting values of PV2 for up-gradation of pedestrian crossings from zebra crossing to a signalized crossing or from a signalized crossing to a grade separated type of facility. K-means clustering were used to define criteria after validating by Nbclust package. K-means clustering gives most compacted clusters for classification of data. In this study all possible combinations of pedestrian and vehicle volume has been used. Threshold values obtained for the PV2 are very high as - compared to threshold values used in other countries.