Investigate the root cause of the jaywalking behavior of pedestrians in downtown Toronto

Challenge

Vision Zero Initiative is a five year (2017-2021) road safety plan, initiated by the Civc Innovation Office at City of Toronto, that focuses on reducing traffic-related serious injuries in Toronto.

To achieve the goal of zero road deaths for pedestrians and bicyclists, there are many different angles being researched and explored as opportunities for improvement.

The Vision Zero approach believes that people make mistakes and the transportation system needs to be designed and operated in a way that caters to human error to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries. Therefore, the outcome of this research project will be used to inform policy design and strategy improvement from a user research angle.

Research Goals

1. Understand when do pedestrians in downtown Toronto feel at risk.

2. Identify the types of behavioral change pedestrians make to reduce risks on the road.

3. Identify areas of discrepancy between human errors and the transportation system design, especially at midblock, intersection, and crossover.

Hypothesis

• People feel at risk when motor vehicles turn right at red lights because drivers often neglect pedestrian and assert their right of way (Source: CityNews).

• People feel at risk especially at midblock because mid-block crossing has accounted for over 58 per cent of the pedestrian involved fatalities in 2017 (Source: Global News).

• Mobile phone usage may be a main distractor for both distracted drivers and pedestrians on the road (Source: Pedestrian Accidents – Intersections vs. Mid-Block Crossings).

User Interviews

I chose to focus on the downtown pedestrian population because statistics from the Toronto Police Services in 2017 indicated that 45% of Torontonians were killed or seriously injured on foot and a majority of people who travel by foot lives in downtown. Therefore, it is particularly important to further understand this subpopulation to develop a truly effective road safety strategy for vulnerable road users. Based on the demographic information of downtown Toronto, I chose to interview 3 youth (age 15-22) and 7 working age group (23-64) to represent the subpopulation accurately.

I spent the first month gathering data to understand pedestrians’ needs, challenges, habits and underlying behaviors traveling on foot in downtown Toronto. I was particularly interested in investigating how pedestrians feel about crossing at midblocks and intersections, where the collision rates are the highest according to the police report.

Observation Sessions

I chose to conduct observation sessions because this method can effectively complement the research findings from user interviews. By observing pedestrians’ behaviors in the field, I can better understand the context of their actions and the causal relation of their behaviors while crossing the street. Since I hypothesized that social and environmental factor may play a role in pedestrians’ risk perception, it is important to understand the social environment when they crossed the street.

Based on the Pedestrian Injury Heat Map published by the City of Toronto, I conducted 4 observation sessions at sites where the map had indicated high percentage of accident in downtown Toronto. During these sessions, I especially paid attention to the interaction between the drivers and pedestrians and noted any evidence that may support or invalidate the initial hypotheses.

Reframe the Problem Space

After initial synthesis, I realized that my initial research goals are too broad and I need to narrow down the topics to generate focused and actionable insight for the Civic Innovation Office. Thus, I decided to focus on answering the question “why do people jaywalk in downtown Toronto?” for my final presentation.

The Action-intention Gap

After synthesizing the findings around pedestrian’s jaywalking behavior, I found that there is an underlying mismatch between pedestrian’s jaywalking behavior and their safety awareness.

Pedestrians are clearly aware of the danger and risk involved in jaywalking in downtown, but they still jaywalk anyways. This mismatching behavior is called “action-intention gap” in behavioral economics, where people’s action is different with what they say. Therefore, in order to answer “why do people jaywalk in downtown Toronto?”, it’s important to ask “why do pedestrian’s jaywalking behavior mismatch with their safety awareness?”

Key Insights

Pedestrians are aware of the risk of jaywalking, but they still jaywalk because of an established culture of jaywalking in downtown Toronto. Why is that? Let’s break it down into 3 components:

1. Pedestrians perceive an underlying social pressure for jaywalking

2. Pedestrians believe jaywalking is required when crosswalk with traffic light regulation is unavailable or inconvenient

3. Pedestrians often jaywalk with an established strategy and confidence

Recommendations

To change the culture of jaywalking, we must tackle each component that makes jaywalk necessary for pedestrians:

1. Increase the number of crosswalks available

2. Improve pedestrian regulation

3. Educational (but fun) slogan

4. Make waiting at traffic light social and fun 

Final Presentation

I presented my research and recommendations to 80+ policy designers and UXRs in the Toronto Shopify office in the summer of 2018.

✉️ Contact me to learn more about my experience.