Guidelines for Implementation of Right Turn Flashing Yellow Arrows and Leading Pedestrian Intervals

Cunningham, Chris; Pyo, Kihyun; Baek, Juwoon; Byrom, Elizabeth; Warchol, Shannon · 2020 · ROSA P / North Carolina. Department of Transportation

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Summary

This report, commissioned by the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), aims to develop implementation guidelines for Right Turn Flashing Yellow Arrows (RT FYA) and Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPI) to improve pedestrian safety at signalized intersections. The research was motivated by North Carolina’s successful adoption of left-turn FYAs and the subsequent expansion of RT FYAs and LPIs in municipalities like Charlotte. The primary objectives were to determine the conditions under which these treatments benefit pedestrians, assess their impact on driver yielding rates, and evaluate effects on vehicular delay. The study intended to analyze field-generated data from 10 stand-alone RT FYA sites and 14 stand-alone LPI sites across North Carolina. However, the project was closed early because no new installations occurred during the study period, preventing the collection of before-and-after data. Furthermore, surrogate data could not be reliably captured from nearby sites to represent pre-installation conditions. Consequently, the analysis is limited to post-installation observations of stand-alone treatments; no data were collected for sites combining both RT FYA and LPI. Despite these methodological limitations, the collected data provided preliminary insights into driver behavior. Initial observations suggested that LPIs yielded higher compliance rates, with 84% of drivers yielding to pedestrians compared to only 49% at RT FYA sites. However, the authors caution that this comparison is flawed due to significant biases: RT FYA sites required a higher proportion of staged pedestrian crossings, and the geographic locations of the two treatment types varied widely. Additionally, the study found no significant difference in yield rates between single-lane and dual-lane configurations, suggesting that multiple-threat scenarios did not significantly alter driver behavior in this sample. Field observations indicated that most conflicts and violations stemmed from vehicles executing right-turns-on-red. The report concludes that while LPIs appear more effective at encouraging yielding than RT FYAs in this specific dataset, the findings are not robust enough to form definitive guidelines due to the lack of comparative baseline data. The authors recommend further study, particularly before-and-after analyses, to validate these trends. They also propose the use of dynamic “blank out” signs displaying messages like “Yield to Pedestrians” when push buttons are activated, as a cost-effective measure to mitigate right-turn-on-red violations. This recommendation requires future empirical validation to determine its effectiveness.

Key finding

Leading Pedestrian Interval sites demonstrated an 84% driver yield rate compared to a 49% yield rate at Right Turn Flashing Yellow Arrow sites.

Methodology

field_study

Sample size: 24

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

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• vru facing ehmi
• driver vru interaction