Examine the pedestrian road crossing behavior in Kuwait

• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Sharaf AlKheder,Ashwag Alrashidi,Areej Zaqzouq
• Date: 01 December 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2812

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Examine the pedestrian road crossing behavior in Kuwait

Sharaf AlKheder | Ashwag Alrashidi | Areej Zaqzouq

Civil Engineering Department, College of

Engineering & Petroleum, Kuwait University,

Kuwait City, Kuwait

Correspondence

Sharaf AlKheder, Civil Engineering

Department, College of Engineering &

Petroleum, Kuwait University, Kuwait City,

Kuwait.

Email: sharaf.alkehder@ku.edu.kw

This study sheds light on pedestrian and driver's behavior towards crossing in

Kuwait. It examined the effect of different factors on pedestrian and vehicle viola-

tions at 10 locations in Kuwait including signalized, nonsignalized intersections, loca-

tions with/without pedestrian's bridge, and locations with/without pedestrian

crossing signals. Four types of pedestrian's violations were observed; crossing out-

side the marked crossway, not obeying traffic signal, distracted crossing (eating,

drinking, or using a smartphone while crossing), and not using pedestrian's bridge.

For vehicle violations, two types were observed; not yielding to pedestrians and

stopping over the marked crossway. The pedestrian and vehicle violations observed

are considered as “violations”according to the existing Highway Code in Kuwait. A

total of 24,393 pedestrian crossing violations were recorded over 40 days. Pedes-

trian violations were analyzed using a multinomial logit model while vehicle violations

were analyzed by frequencies analysis. Video data were used for validation applying

a trajectory-based approach showing a high accuracy level of 98.85%. The results

showed that all the studied factors; time of observation including weekdays and

weekends, and peak and off-peak hours, location of observation, demographic char-

acteristics including pedestrian gender, and age, and site properties (with/without

pedestrian's bridge and with/without pedestrian crossing signal) were significant and

had a strong relationship with the type of violations. The results also indices the

importance of providing pedestrian's bridge in locations with a high number of

violations.

KEYWORDS

intersections, Kuwait, multinomial logit regression, pedestrian safety, violation

1|INTRODUCTION

1.1 |Background

Pedestrian safety in urban areas is an issue of growing concern.

Pedestrians' safety is the most common and dangerous event that

occurs in both urban and rural areas in developing countries. It is one

of the critical issues in transportation, knowing that many pedestrians

lose their lives in road crashes every year. Walking is considered as

one of the most sustainable transportation means that have numerous

benefits for both the individuals and the public community. For the

public community, walking can be considered as sustainable mode of

transportation. In addition, individual walking has several advantages

such as avoiding traffic congestion and saving travel time for drivers,

reducing parking problems, enhancing mobility, and increasing health

benefits by keeping people away from emissions generated from dif-

ferent transportation modes. Besides, it is considered the cheapest

mode of transportation.

However, road accidents all over the world are threatening

pedestrians and may contribute immensely to discourage people to

transport by walking. It may contribute to raising the congestion and

traffic problems rather than managing vehicle flow rate if they are not

applied in relevant areas. Accordingly, many researches were con-

cerned about pedestrian safety evaluation and improvement. Several

Received: 10 February 2021 Revised: 10 October 2021 Accepted: 22 December 2021

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2812

J Public Affairs. 2022;22(Suppl. 1):e2812. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1of15

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2812