Carrboro’s plastic crosswalk signs keep getting murdered

The plastic pedestrian crosswalk people that guards intersections along Greensboro, Weaver, and Main Street keep getting murdered and maimed. 

You’ve probably seen these signs. Their official name is: “R1-6A spring-loaded in-street pedestrian crosswalk signs with /QR One Base, 40# Base.” (For the sake of brevity, I’ll refer to them as “crosswalk signs” for this piece.)

Crosswalk signs weigh 50 pounds and stand about 3 feet tall. They have a springy base. In Carrboro, they are installed at pedestrian intersections near Weaver Street Market, by Fitch Lumber, near Jade Palace, down by the new library, and near Breakaway Cafe.

From public records, we can conclude that our crosswalk signs meet brutal – and costly – ends on a regular basis.

After multiple readers emailed us pictures of smashed crosswalk signs over the past few months, we asked the Town for information on “data and/or any emails about street-mounted pedestrian crossing/warning signs that have been installed/purchased for use on Greensboro or Main Street in Carrboro at the crosswalks from the last 5 years.” This data would give us a good idea of how often these signs get hit. 

What we found is this: They get hit all of the time. 

The town sent us data and some details. From May 26, 2020 through July 29, 2024, 28 crosswalk signs were repaired and 16 were replaced. (Also 2 were removed to accommodate construction at the new library.) We’re killing about one a month.

Where are they most likely to be hit?

The crosswalk sign at East Weaver Street (the rainbow crosswalk in front of Weaver Street Market) was hit 9 times in a four year period. The crosswalk sign at 104 E. Main Street (where Bank of America and Napoli Pizza are) was hit 14 times in the four year period.

Other crosswalk signs that met an untimely end include the one on Greensboro across the street from Fitch (10 times), the one near the roundabout on S. Greensboro (9 times) and the one by Carrboro Elementary School (1 time).

They get hit so often that these incidents have twice been picked up by Google Street View, which visits our area about every two years.

Note: We deduped addresses from the spreadsheet and combined locations that were in the same place, but had different addresses listed. (For example: E Weaver St and Weaver St and E Weaver Street were combined for analysis.)

Does this mean that these intersections are not safe for pedestrians?

If a car is knocking over a barrier, they most certainly could knock over a human.

We reached out to Seth LaJeunesse, a researcher at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center  and lives in Carrboro. (LaJeunesse previously worked for the National Center for Safe Routes to School and has spent his career researching transportation and pedestrian safety.) 

He said this: “Pedestrian safety is almost entirely dependent on two things: 1) pedestrians’ exposure to moving cars; and 2) the speed at which cars travel near pedestrians. This means that if we are serious about protecting pedestrians of all ages and abilities, we must either 1) keep cars away from pedestrians in specified areas (like E. Weaver St. or school zones); or 2) ensure cars travel at no more than 20 mph (or 15 mph if we’re talking about older pedestrians) when going by or crossing paths with pedestrians.” 

Is this costing the town a lot of money?

Evelyn Greene, the town’s communication and engagement specialist, passed along this message from Public Works Director Kevin Belanger: “An individual complete unit costs $415.

Due to the high cost to buy a complete unit, the team at Public Works has started buying pieces individually to assemble the units. That helps in regards to repair, in that we know all the pieces required and typically have them in stock or can get them quickly to fix a damaged unit.  It also helps be more efficient with funds as the cost savings is significant if we build a new unit ourselves vs buy one ready to install.

Total cost of parts for a replacement unit is $165.90 if we must replace an entire unit.”

We could get permanent or semi-permanent bollards installed along Weaver Street, pedestrianizing the entire thing, for about the same amount we’re spending in replacement crosswalk signs. 

Well, what now?

It’s great to have the data in aggregate over a period of time because it clearly points to a problem. What’s good is that the Town of Carrboro maintains some of these streets (like Weaver) which means the Town of Carrboro can act. (NCDOT maintains N and S Greensboro St, which means it’s much harder to get changes, as we’ve written about in the past.)

I spoke to a few town council members who have advocated for pedestrians in the past, and shared this data with them. Here’s what they said:

Danny Nowell: “Data like this reflects the problem with car-centric development, and illustrates the need for planning decisions to anticipate future priorities. I think it’s fair to say our council agrees that reducing these kinds of collisions is a priority, and will take a multi-faceted approach.

There are some constraints by state law on our ability to control road design, but as we begin to re-examine our land use, we need to be considering best practices like re-greening impervious pavement to create to more human-friendly roadways, narrowing streets where possible, coordinating traffic flow with one-ways, and designing complete streets where we continue to need high-traffic corridors.

For safety reasons, for climate reasons, and for economic development reasons, we need our streets to be human-centered and safe for everyone from 8 to 80. And while we need to be extremely careful and proportional about enforcement mechanisms, this is a clear public safety problem in the present and demands some attention to make sure we’re keeping neighbors safe while we find the right long term solution.”

Jason Merrill: “The frequency with which these signs meet their demise is alarming, especially considering how similar the dimensions of a child are to the dimensions of these signs….I think these signs are doing some of their job by serving as sacrifices to inattentive drivers, but I can imagine that a taller and/or more permanent sign could do an even better job, and there may be some unintended consequences, but most of the ones that I can imagine (like more severe damage to a car that hits one) are a worthwhile trade for increased pedestrian safety. 

On a larger scale, I would love to see Weaver St. pedestrianized because I believe that it would have the most benefits for downtown Carrboro. It would obviously create a safe haven for pedestrians downtown, it would dramatically expand the footprint of our de facto town plaza (i.e. the Weaver St lawn), and it would make the overly complicated 5-point intersection a two-way intersection, which should make the intersection at Main and Roberson less congested and less frustrating.”

Catherine Fray: “When researchers look at car accidents of all kinds, not just property damage but collisions with pedestrians or other cars, speed is a huge factor. Accidents are more likely and also cause more damage at higher speeds, and the rate of injury and death in an accident is dramatically higher.

We also know that speed is mostly about design and not about laws. People go faster because the design of the road suggests to them that they can. A high rate of speeding or accidents usually means the road is too wide and straight. Towns around the world have already developed and tested better designs that slow cars down.”