Abstract
The rising of the automobile helped the development of the cities, bringing important changes for the behavior of its habitants. However, the urban designers sometimes underestimated people needs when walking in the streets. The objective of this paper is to provide an ergonomic approach about the difficulties of Americas Avenue faced by pedestrians. This avenue is an important highway of Barra da Tijuca borough, located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and it is one of the most dangerous ways of the city, because of its high index of run over reports. This research is based on assistematics observations and questionnaire form application, that helps us to reflect about the behavior of people before the barriers imposed by built environment. The results showed that the pedestrians, even if aware of deadly risks, prefer to disrespect the safe rules of the transit in attempting to reach the destiny in less time. It is possible to verify how that area is oriented, almost exclusively, for cars and how the urban space can induce the actions of the user.
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