Effects of a driver enforcement program on yielding to pedestrians.
Two weeks of decoy pedestrians plus warning flyers doubled driver yielding and the gain held for a year.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Van Houten et al. (2004) tested a two-week driver-yielding program on two city streets.
Plain-clothes officers acted as decoy pedestrians. Police handed warning flyers to drivers who did not stop.
The team used a multiple-baseline design across the two roads to see if yielding would rise.
What they found
Yielding more than doubled after the short enforcement package.
The gain lasted one year with only rare booster checks.
How this fits with other research
Tanoue et al. (1988) got a similar big drop in handicapped-parking violations with a short police-plus-signage package. The pattern shows brief community enforcement plus clear feedback can shift adult rule-following fast.
Jackson et al. (2025) moved the idea into 2025 by using phone-app cash rewards instead of police tickets. Their effect was smaller, but it reveals how the same yielding goal can be pursued with tech and incentives rather than warnings.
Critchfield (1996) wiped out bathroom graffiti for three months with just posted signs. Together these studies say: simple, visible cues plus a mild consequence make public behavior change stick.
Why it matters
You can copy this package almost anywhere. Pick a crosswalk, train two staff as decoy pedestrians, print one-page warning flyers, and run the drill for two weeks. Track yielding each day with a clicker. When the line jumps, drop to monthly spot checks to keep it there. Cities have used the same steps for parking, litter, and seat belts—now you have the roadmap for pedestrians.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A driver-yielding enforcement program that included decoy pedestrians, feedback flyers, written and verbal warnings, and saturation enforcement for a 2-week period was evaluated in the city of Miami Beach using a multiple baseline design. During baseline, data were collected at crosswalks along two major corridors. Treatment was introduced first at selected crosswalks without traffic signals along one corridor. A week later, enforcement was shifted to crosswalks along the second corridor. Results indicated that the percentage of drivers yielding to pedestrians increased following the introduction of the enforcement program in each corridor and that these increases were sustained for a period of a year with minimal additional enforcement. The effects also generalized somewhat to untreated crosswalks in both corridors, as well as to crosswalks with traffic signals.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 2004 · doi:10.1901/jaba.2004.37-351