Best questions for citizen survey about pedestrian safety

Here are some of the best questions for a citizen survey about pedestrian safety, plus a few tips for crafting great survey questions that will get you useful, actionable feedback. With Specific, you can build this type of survey for your community in seconds—no manual writing required.

Best open-ended questions for a citizen survey about pedestrian safety

Open-ended questions are where you really capture real stories and ideas from people. They’re perfect if you want honest detail, not just numbers. These are powerful for surfacing concerns, lived experiences, and suggestions that closed questions can miss.

Here are 10 best open-ended questions to get deep insights for a citizen survey about pedestrian safety:

1. How safe do you feel when walking in your neighborhood, and what makes you feel that way?

2. Can you describe any recent experiences where you felt at risk as a pedestrian?

3. Which intersections or streets in your area do you think are most dangerous for walkers? Why?

4. What improvements would make it safer or easier for you to walk more often?

5. Have you witnessed or heard of pedestrian accidents locally? What were the circumstances?

6. Are there specific times of day (e.g. after dark) when you feel less safe walking? Why?

7. How well do you think local drivers respect pedestrian crossings?

8. Do you notice any groups in your community (e.g. children, seniors) who face more pedestrian risks? Please explain.

9. What, if anything, stops you from walking in your area as much as you’d like?

10. What other comments or stories would you like to share about pedestrian safety here?

Open-ended feedback helps you uncover what’s really going on. Given that over 75% of pedestrian fatalities occur after dark, it’s crucial to listen closely to citizens’ concerns—especially about lighting and visibility. [2]

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for a citizen survey about pedestrian safety

Single-select multiple-choice questions are great when you want structured data or need to spot trends quickly. They lower the mental load for respondents and give you quantifiable insight—especially useful right at the start of your survey, or to frame a discussion that you follow up with an open-ended question.

Question: How safe do you feel when walking in your area during daylight hours?

• Very safe

• Somewhat safe

• Not very safe

• Not safe at all

Question: Which pedestrian safety concerns do you experience most frequently?

• Speeding vehicles

• Poor lighting after dark

• Lack of sidewalks or crossings

• Distracted drivers

• Other

Question: Have you or someone you know been involved in a pedestrian-vehicle incident in the past year?

• Yes

• No

• Prefer not to say

When to follow up with “why?” If someone selects “Not very safe” or “Not safe at all,” follow up with: “Why do you feel that way?” These simple prompts help you dig deeper into the causes and possible solutions, surfacing crucial details that the original choice can’t capture on its own. Responses like this can help cities understand why drivers struck and killed over 7,148 pedestrians in 2024—sometimes nearly 20% higher than recent lows. [1]

When and why to add the “Other” choice? Use “Other” when you suspect you haven’t captured every possible answer. It allows participants to introduce new issues or risks, which follow-up questions can then explore in detail. Sometimes the most actionable insight comes from an unexpected source.

Should you use an NPS question for a citizen survey about pedestrian safety?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is best known as a business metric, but it can spark meaningful insights in a public safety context too. For example: “On a scale from 0–10, how likely are you to recommend walking in our community to a friend or family member?” This question highlights whether citizens would actively promote (or warn against) local walkability. The followup—“What is the main reason for your score?”—helps get beyond the number. Specific makes it easy to generate an NPS survey for pedestrian safety and tailor follow-ups automatically to each score segment.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions are the superpower of conversational surveys. Instead of settling for broad or ambiguous answers, you dig deeper—clarifying details, motivations, or edge cases. According to the GHSA, the increasing dominance of light trucks and SUVs (which are now involved in 54% of pedestrian fatalities) [1] means we need to know not only how people feel, but which vehicles make them feel unsafe, in which locations, and why.

Specific’s AI-driven surveys excel at this: our automatic AI follow-up feature picks up on the nuances of every answer and adapts probe questions in real time—just like a smart interviewer. You capture fuller, richer stories without spending hours on manual follow-ups.

• Citizen: “I don’t feel safe after dark.”

• AI follow-up: “What are the specific reasons you feel less safe after dark? Is it due to lighting, traffic, or something else?”

• Citizen: “Drivers here are reckless.”

• AI follow-up: “Can you describe a recent incident that made you feel this way about local drivers?”

How many follow-ups to ask? In most cases, 2–3 follow-up questions are enough to clarify key details or root causes. Specific lets you set maximum follow-up depth, and to skip if you’ve already got the info you need. This keeps the conversation focused and respectful of people’s time.

This makes it a conversational survey: you’re not collecting one-off data points—you’re having a rich, back-and-forth dialogue, led naturally by the AI.

AI analysis, survey insights, summarizing responses: Don’t worry about handling all this unstructured feedback. AI survey tools like Specific’s survey analyzer can instantly summarize responses, highlight patterns (e.g., “lighting is the top after-dark concern”), and make sense of the noise. Even with long answers, you’ll spot what matters most.

Automated, intelligent follow-up questions are a whole new frontier in feedback. I always encourage teams to try generating a survey and see how it elevates the entire conversation, right from the start.

How to craft the best AI prompts for citizen pedestrian safety surveys

If you prefer building surveys with AI (like ChatGPT), your prompts make all the difference. For a quick start, use:

Ask an AI to generate open questions:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for citizen survey about pedestrian safety.

But be specific! AI gets far better results with background context. For example:

We’re a small U.S. city looking to understand pedestrian safety concerns after a rise in nighttime accidents. Citizens are of all ages. Please suggest 10 open-ended questions that can surface real experiences, and help us identify actionable improvements for city planners.

Categorize, then expand:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Once you have themes, double down:

Generate 10 questions specifically about ‘crosswalk safety’ and ‘vehicle speed concerns’ for a citizen survey on pedestrian safety.

Iterate on the outputs, combine categories, and always clarify your objective. AI survey building gets stronger with every extra detail you provide.

What is a conversational survey and why use AI?

Traditional manual survey forms collect answers, but the experience can feel rigid and detached. AI-generated conversational surveys—like those built with Specific—are interactive, dynamic, and naturally adapt on the fly to every respondent. This not only improves completion rates but also delivers higher-quality open-ended feedback that’s easy to analyze. Compare the two approaches:

Why use AI for citizen surveys? With AI, you spend less time creating and chasing down feedback, and more time acting on real-world insights. An AI survey example focused on pedestrian safety gives you both the flexibility of open dialogue and the precision of clean, structured data—all in a user-friendly package. Specific’s conversational surveys have helped local governments and community groups get dramatically better data, and the platform’s AI survey builder makes the process smooth for both creators and citizens.

If you want the best-in-class user experience for both making surveys and collecting pedestrian safety feedback, Specific is your ideal partner. It’s never been easier to run an effective, truly conversational citizen survey about pedestrian safety.

See this pedestrian safety survey example now

Experience a modern citizen survey designed for deep, actionable insights with AI-powered follow-ups and analysis. Get started with a conversational survey and unlock richer feedback in minutes—see what Specific’s approach can do for your next pedestrian safety project.