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Is anyone aware of communications that have been done by road safety teams in relation to Zebra Crossings and casualty reductions?
Do you mean public consultation processes to install new crossings? Or do you mean the collision rates around them generally? I think a while ago zebra crossings used to average one minor collision a year which is why we tried not to do them if there wasn’t a history of collisions or a PV2 value which showed significant conflict between traffic and pedestrians being present. If you put a zebra where there’s no collisions you can ironically end up increasing the collision rate purely by attracting increased crossing movements to that location. The DfT line is that if there isn’t sufficient pedestrian demand then traffic got used to rarely ever stopping for the crossing and effectively stopped seeing it which led to violations. However, if there are pedestrians but not enough traffic demand, pedestrians tended to ignore the crossing and cross either side of it which also raised safety issues. Zebras actually had the same collision rate as light controlled crossings, but light controlled crossings are better for busier, higher speed roads as well as being more helpful for the visually impaired. Zebras are very useful where pedestrian crossing demand is suppressed as they simply can’t attempt crossing or where collisions have occurred though. Does this help?
I would just like to say that my understanding of the situation around zebra crossings is exactly the same as Kendrick Hourd’s. They are not safety measures per se. They merely provided time for pedestrians to cross where traffic volumes cause difficulty. A relevant study might be this one of TRL’s:
https://trl.co.uk/uploads/trl/documents/LR895.pdf
and it is worth noting that paragraph 14.1.2 of Chapter 6 of the Traffic Signs Manual contains the warning:
“It should not be assumed that provision of a crossing will necessarily lead to a reduction in road accidents.” This applies to any crossing, not just Zebra crossings.
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