Gordon Meth Quoted by Business Insider on Parking Lot Design
Business Insider quoted Robson Forensic Civil Engineer, Gordon Meth in an article on retail worker deaths in parking lots, citing his piece on Parking Lot Design.
With hundreds of millions of shoppers visiting Walmart and Target's 6,400 combined US stores each week, the companies' parking lots serve as a microcosm of the dangers in the wider world, from physical violence to car crashes.
But while individual human behavior is difficult to control, parking lots can be redesigned to significantly improve pedestrian safety, according to analysis from the Robson Forensic civil-engineering expert Gordon Meth.
Meth cited a 2017 study of 45 New Jersey municipalities. It that found that nearly one-fifth of vehicle-pedestrian crashes in those municipalities occurred in parking facilities, of which more than half occurred on the properties of shopping centers, grocery stores, or big-box retailers.
Robson Forensic research has found that speed bumps and one-way lanes actually create more risk for pedestrians than they solve, as bumps can cause people to trip and carts to overturn, and one-way lanes encourage drivers to speed.
Meth recommends other design measures, like narrower roadways in front of stores; two-way parking lanes with perpendicular rather than angled spaces, and physical barriers that direct traffic in ways that help slow the speed of cars and force drivers to remain more alert.
The full story:
Store parking lots have become hotbeds for crime — and retail workers are paying the price
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