[NFBSea] City of Bellevue Turns to Traffic Safety Technology to Curb Pedestrian Accidents - Route Fifty - April 18, 2022

[Nightingale, Noel]

Thought some on this list might find this of interest.

https://www.route-fifty.com/public-safety/2022/04/traffic-safety-tech-curbs-pedestrian-related-accidents/365774/
City Turns to Traffic Safety Technology to Curb Pedestrian Accidents
By Shourjya Mookerjee
Route Fifty
April 18, 2022

Officials say two new tools will make the streets of Bellevue, Washington, safer by increasing the time pedestrians have at crosswalks and better identifying multimodal traffic at intersections.
As part of the city's Vision Zero strategy to eliminate traffic-related deaths by 2030, Bellevue, Washington, is installing two new traffic safety tools at downtown intersections.
The first tool will make minor adjustments to traffic signal timing, giving pedestrians a five-second head start at crosswalks before vehicles are given the green light to turn left or right.
The timing change makes foot traffic more visible to drivers and decreases collisions, which, according to a 10-year analysis of city's police incident reports, contributed to 41% of all pedestrian deaths.
Video analytics helped officials evaluate footage from intersection traffic cameras and showed a 42% reduction in vehicle-pedestrian close calls after pedestrian intervals were introduced, according to a city release. Based on a 2020 pilot, Bellevue is now expanding the interval technology to 41 downtown intersections.
The second traffic safety system has been installed at two downtown intersections. Cameras and LiDAR technology will help identify vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists, and data from the images will be used by Bellevue's adaptive traffic signals.
Currently, the city's adaptive signals use inductive loops under city streets to detect users and adjust signal timing. The new tool will lower costs by removing the need to maintain loops in the pavement, city officials said.
Bellevue's Vision Zero program maintains an interactive collision dashboard where it tracks fatal and serious injury accidents on city streets over a 10-year period. Users can filter the data by date, travel mode, contributing circumstances and primary vehicle action.



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