Bollards and rubber curbs to stop drivers from cutting across intersections at a diagonal can make streets safer for pedestrians, according to a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

Such “centerline hardening” forces drivers to turn more slowly at close to a right angle by blocking the diagonal path through the crosswalk.

In Washington, D.C., the infrastructure changes have reduced the number of times drivers have to swerve or brake suddenly, or pedestrians had to dodge out of the way by 70 percent, says IIHS Senior Research Transportation Engineer Wen Hu, the author of the paper.

“This study suggests that simple infrastructure changes can deliver big benefits,” Hu said. “Communities looking for ways to make pedestrians safer should add centerline hardening to their toolbox.”

The calming infrastructure has also resulted in a reduction in average left-turn speeds and decreased the odds that drivers made the turn at speeds exceeding 15 mph.

The IIHS says pedestrian fatalities rose by 53 percent from 2009 to 2018 and now account for 17 percent of traffic deaths in the U.S.

In 2018 a little more than half of all crashes involving pedestrians took place at intersections resulting in more than 6,700 serious injuries to pedestrians and more than 1,500 pedestrian fatalities. In one of the more common scenarios, a driver making a left turn crashes into a pedestrian crossing the road the driver is turning onto. These left-turn crashes accounted for nearly a third of all pedestrian-involved crashes at intersections in 2018.