Pedestrian countdown signals cause more car crashes: study
Posted October 4, 2013 8:45 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A Toronto study has found that pedestrian countdown signals cause more car crashes, backing up similar research released in April.
The Hospital for Sick Children said the rate of crashes increased by 26 per cent at intersections with countdown signals.
There are 1,965 such intersections in Toronto.
The research was published in the medical journal Injury Prevention on Sept. 23. Click here to read the study.
In April, University of Toronto PhD students Arvind Magesan and Sacha Kapoor had similar findings. They decided to find out how the signs were working and if they were encouraging risky driving behaviour.
The pair looked at police data from all the intersections in Toronto from 2004-2008 — at the time, there were just 1,764 intersections with countdown signals. The five-year period spanned the time before and after the city started installing the signals in 2006.
They found the countdowns caused about 22 more car crashes per month on average or an increase of more than five per cent.
Read their full study here.
