Citation

Fotios S, Robbins CJ. Transp. Res. Rec. 2022; 2676(2): 593-605.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/03611981211044469

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article investigates the effect of ambient light level on traffic flow for different types of road user--pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers of motorized vehicles--using counts of traffic flow recorded by automated counters. Previous analyses have focused only on pedestrians and/or cyclists, in Arlington, Virginia (U.S.) and Birmingham (U.K.). The new data represent all three types of road user for one location (Cambridge, U.K.) and motorized vehicles in London (U.K.), Adelaide (Australia) and trunk roads in England. The effect of ambient light level was established using odds ratios to compare traffic flows in case and control hours, chosen to isolate the effect of ambient light from other factors of influence. The data for this analysis included the counts for 71,477,159 motorized vehicles, 89,392 pedestrians, and 66,925 cyclists. It was found that darkness leads to significant reductions in pedestrians and cyclists but does not have a significant effect on the number of motorized vehicles.

Language: en

Keywords

bicycles; bicyclist safety; human factors; human factors of infrastructure design and operations; lighting; mopeds; motorcycles; operations; pedestrian safety; pedestrians; safety; traffic flow; traffic flow characteristics; traffic flow theory