Crossing the street using flashing beacons appears to be pretty straightforward on the surface.

  • Best Food Forward: 20 percent increase in drivers yielding
  • Officials said the increase over the last 3 years isn't enough
  • Other options to improve safety are being considered

You push a button, wait for the lights to start flashing and then you cross the street when the vehicles stop.

Sounds easy, right?

Well, officials said that they haven't seen the jump in driver yield rate they were hoping to see at multiple locations that house the flashing beacons.

News 13 stopped by one location on International Drive, just north of Pointe Orlando.

When Best Foot Forward started this initiative, just 10 percent of drivers yielded for pedestrians. Now, it's up to 30 percent.

That may sound like a decent increase, but it's over a span of more than 30 years.

Amanda Day, of Best Foot Forward, said: "Why can't we get to 80 percent or 90 percent of the people?"

The intersection of Edgewater Drive and Shady Lane has similar problems. Best Foot Forward representatives said their studies show some drivers can't see — or aren't focusing on — the flashing lights.

Some walkers don't even know how to use the intersection.

An outlier in the trend is Lake Underhill Road and Palmer Road, where the yield rate jumped from 10 percent to 60 percent.

"Why? Well, we do have better engineering over there as far as painted crosswalk and signage," Day said. "But more importantly, the enforcement. The officers are enforcing the driver yield law."

Officials now find themselves wondering whether flashing crossing beacons are effective, and the debate has sparked enough for them to at least consider scrapping them entirely and pursue alternative methods.

"There are improvements," Day said. "There is something called a HAWK that the residents and drivers here are going to see more of. That is a yellow light that looks like a stop light that hangs over the crosswalk."

Another possible improvement could be a crosswalk that actually lights up when a button is pushed — letting drivers know at night that they need to yield to pedestrians. 

News 13 has partnered with the Florida Department of Transportation on its “Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow” campaign. The idea is to make sure we’re all sharing the road with people who walk or ride their bikes, and everyone makes it where they need to be safely. FDOT has all kinds of resources for you on alerttodayflorida.com.