This thesis is about the risk behavior adopted by pedestrians at crosswalks with traffic light equipament. It was observed that many pedestrians take risk to cross the Presidente Vargas Avenue. This avenue is located in downtown in Rio de Janeiro city and has a heavy vehicular traffic and intense pedestrian flow. Many pedestrians cross the four lanes of avenue dangerously disobeying the traffic light indications. To conduct this research about pedestrian s behavior at crosswalks, a model developed by American researchers - Wogalter, Dejoy and Laughery (1999) - known as Communication-Human Information Processing Model - C-HIP Model was used. This model is organized sequentially in seven stages. The initial stages are about how information are transmitted by a source and the intermediary and final stages allow to investigate how a person receives and processes the message in order to be committed to adopt a desired behavior. Investigating the stages by C-HIP model perspective, using methods and techniques for each stage, enabled to identify which factors can contribute to pedestrians to disobey traffic signs and adopt a risky behavior in pedestrian crossing. The main methods applied observation and inquiry techniques. Systematic observations were made to investigate the pedestrians’ attention and their behavior. Rating Scale were applied to investigate how are related the pedestrians’ traffic education with their beliefs, motivations and behavior. The comprehension of graphic elements were studied through the test of graphical symbols (ISO 9186). The data were processed and analyzed using methods of inferential statistics (Pearson s correlation and Qui-squared). Later, seven respondents took part in a semi-structured interview session to gather information that would not be possible through quantitative methods. It was considered that the main contact form with traffic education was orientation coming from family. The pedestrians have an optimistic belief about their capacity to evaluate the right time to cross the lanes and the hurry is one of the main motivating factors for disobeying traffic law. The results showed that pedestrians use mostly as source of information coming vehicles from the lanes and the men behaved in a more insecure way and observed the lanes more than women. The female pedestrians observed ahead (pedestrian traffic light) and respected more the traffic light indications than men. It was revealed that the acceptance s level of the crosswalks and traffic light s symbols is accepted by the ISO 9186 index. It was concluded that the pedestrian more confident in their ability to evaluate the crossing moment or who is hurried has a tendency to take risk while crossing the avenue. Finally, it was suggested future studies in graphic design with C-HIP model approach to investigate the whole communication process.