Human-centered measures to enhance safety at level crossings

Abstract

Road user behavior plays a major role in accidents at level crossings. Therefore, measures to improve safety at level crossings should be developed with a human factors perspective. Moreover, they should be affordable and applicable to a large number of crossings to achieve tangible safety effects. We report on work to collect and design human-centered low-cost measures to enhance the safety of level crossings that was part of the European project SAFER-LC. First, a pool of design ideas was collected from the research literature, models of road user behavior, and a design workshop with road and rail experts. Second, the measures collected were filtered, categorized and ranked in a three-step process including a classification of their application context and an assessment of their prospects to reduce accident risk. The resulting set comprises 89 measures and will be further developed into a web-based toolbox for road and rail safety practitioners.