About PEDS

PEDS is a member-based advocacy organization dedicated to making metro Atlanta safe and accessible for all pedestrians. When PEDS was founded in 1996, pedestrians were not yet on metro Atlanta’s radar screen. Government agencies identified transportation safety exclusively with occupant safety, engineers lacked information about the needs of pedestrians, police officers ticketed crosswalk law violators only after someone had been hit, and media attention to pedestrians was limited to one-inch blurbs following fatal crashes. Worst of all, people rarely thought of themselves as pedestrians. Because of PEDS’ efforts, all that is changing.

PEDS' goals:

• Change community attitudes to favor pedestrians
• Increase walking and other pedestrian activity
• Ensure the design of pedestrian-oriented communities
• Advance the equitable use of transportation funds
• Reduce the risk to pedestrians of injury and death

Major accomplishments include:

• Transforming pedestrian safety from a non-issue in metro Atlanta to one that attracts front-page headlines, lead editorials, and lead stories on local news broadcasts.
• Prompting the Georgia Department of Transportation to adopt high visibility crosswalk markings as the state standard and to develop a Pedestrian Design Guidebook.
• Presenting workshops on pedestrian facilities design to more than 300 transportation engineers, planners, landscape architects, and community activists.
• Facilitating Police Sting Operations targeting motorists who failed to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks.
• Assisting with the passage of legislation authorizing the use of cameras to ticket red-light runners.
• Prompting installation of in-street crosswalk signs.