Every year, thousands of pedestrians involved in traffic accidents are killed due to jaywalking. The term jaywalking generally refers to any form of illegally crossing a street by a pedestrian; the following several types of behavior qualify as jaywalking: walking against a pedestrian walk signal, crossing a street where no crosswalk is present, and crossing a street outside of a marked crosswalk where one is present. Previous studies have discussed how factors, such as gender, age, road crossing skill components, and perhaps evolution, contribute to pedestrian walking behavior (Holland & Hill, 2010; Pawlowski, Atwal, et. Al. 2008; Rosenbloom, 2009). In the present study, the role of gender plays in pedestrian walking behavior is investigated.…show more content… With all of these statistics that crossing the street is dangerous, should there be a closer look taken to see how to improve crosswalks to make them safer and more efficient for both pedestrians and drivers? When thinking about crosswalks, there are many different kinds, but for our study we are looking at the “unsignaled zebra crosswalks” because those are the most common in Dahlonega, and thirty percent of all pedestrian accidents occur at crosswalks such as these (Olszewski, 2015). Are the accidents cause by pedestrians because they are ignorant or just in a hurry? Jaywalking is directly disobeying a law designed to keep citizens safe when crossing a road, so people who jaywalk are more prone to commit larger violations of the law by simply observing the foot-in-the-door phenomenon when it comes to breaking the law (Mullen, 1990). Also, some may jaywalk across the road because it is the shortest and least risky path to get where they are going (Holland, 2007). Either way jaywalking is an illegal action in the state of Georgia regardless of whether the risk factors have been taken into
