強化行人安全之情境預防策略

The Strategies of Situational Prevention for Enhancing Pedestrian Safety

Taiwan has long been famous for its cuisine, natural landscapes and hospitality. However, it has gained a notorious reputation due to the issue of dangerous roads in recent years. The label of "Living hell for pedestrians" has tarnished Taiwan's international image and standing. When observing the number of deaths and injuries in pedestrian traffic accidents over the years, there has been a general upward trend. Among the six major cities, except for Taichung City and Kaohsiung City, which initially saw an increase followed by a decrease in casualties, the rest have shown a consistent increase year by year. Furthermore, the winter period from November to January each year tends to be the peak season for pedestrian fatalities. Analyzing the monthly trends over the past five years, December consistently stands out as the month with the highest number of pedestrian injuries in traffic incidents. To prevent pedestrian traffic accidents, various strategies have been developed internationally. For instance, Canada launched the "Road Safety Strategy 2025" and promoted the "Vision Zero" initiative in 2016. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the United States implemented the pedestrian safety programs that focus on the safe system approach. Furthermore, when observing the traffic safety planning of different countries, the focus primarily lies on the "3E" policies of education, engineering and enforcement. These policies have evolved into "4E" or "5E" traffic safety policies. In the context of this article, we concentrate on the background of the "3E" policies and specifically emphasize the situational factors involving road users, vehicles and the current traffic environment. We propose 25 situational prevention techniques about pedestrian traffic safety under five major strategies: "Increasing the effort to traffic violations", "Increasing the risk of traffic violations", "Reducing the rewards for traffic violations", "Reducing the provocations of traffic violations" and "Removing the excuses for traffic violations". We also provide relevant policy recommendations for the reference of government agencies in formulating future traffic safety strategies.