Road and street crossing guidance

We have put together recommendations for best practice on pedestrian crossings to highlight the importance of signalised crossings for people with sight loss.

This new guidance is based on independent research that was commissioned in response to reports suggesting that councils are increasingly replacing controlled crossings with informal crossings.

This is becoming problematic for people with sight loss who find pedestrian controlled crossings safer, less stressful and a useful orientation tool as opposed to informal or zebra crossings. 

We decided to find out the preferences of pedestrians with vision impairments and to explore the reasoning for the removal of controlled crossings by councils. To do this, we commissioned two pieces of research – Safer Crossings (a qualitative survey) and Road and Street Crossings (an investigative study), both of which revealed that people with sight loss rely on controlled crossings particularly in high trafficked areas as opposed to other types of crossings. We also found that the removal of crossings is more common in shared space schemes and the absence of controlled crossings and kerbs causes great difficulties for people with vision impairments.