Evaluation of road intersections in areas of high commercial activity through the identification of vehicle-pedestrian conflicts using the black spots methodology

In intersections with high commercial activity, there are constant pedestrian-vehicle conflicts with an incidence greater than 60%, in relation to other types of conflicts according to a study carried out by Yale University. This occurs due to various factors such as the lack of infrastructure to meet the needs of the pedestrian, the invasion of the pedestrian into the vehicular traffic zone, the inadequate design of the intersection and the aggressive behavior of the drivers. All these factors generate accidents that can be serious or very serious, due to the vulnerability of pedestrians. This article evaluates the application of a diagonal pedestrian crossing with an exclusive traffic light phase, so that the passage of pedestrian users is prioritized, their accessibility improves and, with this, the road safety of the intersection is increased. For this, an intersection with high commercial activity located in Lima downtown was selected. Two microsimulation models were built, the current state and the scenario with a proposal to improve the road infrastructure in the Vissim and Viswalk programs in order to verify the effectiveness of the proposal. Also, black spots were identified from substitute road safety measures to evaluate pedestrian-vehicle type conflicts in simulated scenarios. 24 black spots of conflicts were registered in the current scene of the intersection. This made it possible to evaluate the corrective measures considered in the application of the proposal. The results showed that the number of black spots was reduced by 87.5% and, in 7 of the 8 evaluated sections, high-moderate risk conflicts were eliminated.