Author Description

Walking is an important part of a healthy, sustainable transportation system. Yet walking is too often inaccessible, uncomfortable, or unsafe as a practical option for large numbers of people because of traffic risk, discomfort, or inconvenience. Multilane roadways, higher design and posted speeds, and a lack of safe and convenient pedestrian walking and crossing facilities and operations, even at known attractors such as bus stops and grocery stores, are consistently associated with pedestrian fatalities in the United States. The risk is much higher at night. Between 2018 and 2022, 76% of U.S. pedestrian crash fatalities occurred in darkness. NCHRP Research Report 1157: Strategies to Improve Pedestrian Safety at Night: A Guide, from TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, is a state-of-the-art resource for state departments of transportation on addressing the high pedestrian fatalities on their roadways, especially at night. The guide features strategies for transportation professionals to implement to directly enhance pedestrian safety at night and was informed by a multimethod study of pedestrian safety in darkness in the United States. Supplemental to the report is NCHRP Web-Only Document 430: Improving Pedestrian Safety at Night.