scholarly journals Risk Factors for Older Pedestrian Injuries and Fatalities Among Communities in Massachusetts

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 113-113
Author(s):  
Shuangshuang Wang ◽  
Nina Silverstein ◽  
Chae Man Lee ◽  
Frank Porell ◽  
Beth Dugan
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Pedestrian Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Community Factors ◽  
Crash Data ◽  
The Road ◽  
Pedestrian Crashes

Abstract The number of pedestrian crashes in the United States has increased by 35 percent from 2008 to 2017. Among all pedestrian fatalities in 2017, 48% were pedestrians aged 50 and older, which suggests a disproportionate threat to older residents’ health and safety. Massachusetts has a large older population and is experiencing increased numbers of older pedestrian crashes. This research identified risk factors and community characteristics contributing to older pedestrian crashes and suggests leveraging the state’s age-friendly efforts to speed the implementation of countermeasures. Based on ten-year statewide crash data (2006-2015) and community indicators from the 2018 Massachusetts Healthy Aging Data Report, this study examined 4,472 crashes across Massachusetts that involved pedestrians age 55 and over. The leading reasons for crashes were driver’s inattention, driver’s failure to yield right of way, and driver’s issues with visibility. Older pedestrians were hit while walking in the road, often in crosswalks at intersections. Many factors were found to contribute to older pedestrian crashes: time of day (rush hour), time of year (winter), and community factors (higher rates of disabilities, higher percentage of racial minority residents, higher number of cultural amenities, and lack of dementia-friendly community efforts. Greater awareness of older pedestrian safety risks is needed. Communities highlighted in this research warrant priority attention from planning, health, aging services, and transportation authorities to improve older pedestrian safety.

scholarly journals Investigating the Risk Factors Associated with the Severity of the Pedestrians Injured on Spanish Crosstown Roads

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 5194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Casado-Sanz ◽  
Begoña Guirao ◽  
Antonio Lara Galera ◽  
Maria Attard
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Injury Severity ◽  
Motor Vehicle ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Crash Data ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
The Road ◽  
Pedestrian Injury ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Pedestrian Crashes

According to the Spanish General Traffic Accident Directorate, in 2017 a total of 351 pedestrians were killed, and 14,322 pedestrians were injured in motor vehicle crashes in Spain. However, very few studies have been conducted in order to analyse the main factors that contribute to pedestrian injury severity. This study analyses the accidents that involve a single vehicle and a single pedestrian on Spanish crosstown roads from 2006 to 2016 (1535 crashes). The factors that explain these accidents include infractions committed by the pedestrian and the driver, crash profiles, and infrastructure characteristics. As a preliminary tool for the segmentation of 1535 pedestrian crashes, a k-means cluster analysis was applied. In addition, multinomial logit (MNL) models were used for analysing crash data, where possible outcomes were fatalities and severe and minor injured pedestrians. According to the results of these models, the risk factors associated with pedestrian injury severity are as follows: visibility restricted by weather conditions or glare, infractions committed by the pedestrian (such as not using crossings, crossing unlawfully, or walking on the road), infractions committed by the driver (such as distracted driving and not respecting a light or a crossing), and finally, speed infractions committed by drivers (such as inadequate speed). This study proposes the specific safety countermeasures that in turn will improve overall road safety in this particular type of road.

scholarly journals Lower Volumes, Higher Speeds: Changes to Crash Type, Timing, and Severity on Urban Roads from COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Policies

2021 ◽  
pp. 036119812110444
Author(s):  
Jonathan Stiles ◽  
Armita Kar ◽  
Jinhyung Lee ◽  
Harvey J. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Traffic Safety ◽  
Travel Demand ◽  
Multinomial Logistic Regression ◽  
High Volume ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Bayesian Hierarchical ◽  
Crash Data ◽  
The Road ◽  
At Home

Stay-at-home policies in response to COVID-19 transformed high-volume arterials and highways into lower-volume roads, and reduced congestion during peak travel times. To learn from the effects of this transformation on traffic safety, an analysis of crash data in Ohio’s Franklin County, U.S., from February to May 2020 is presented, augmented by speed and network data. Crash characteristics such as type and time of day are analyzed during a period of stay-at-home guidelines, and two models are estimated: (i) a multinomial logistic regression that relates daily volume to crash severity; and (ii) a Bayesian hierarchical logistic regression model that relates increases in average road speeds to increased severity and the likelihood of a crash being fatal. The findings confirm that lower volumes are associated with higher severity. The opportunity of the pandemic response is taken to explore the mechanisms of this effect. It is shown that higher speeds were associated with more severe crashes, a lower proportion of crashes were observed during morning peaks, and there was a reduction in types of crashes that occur in congestion. It is also noted that there was an increase in the proportion of crashes related to intoxication and speeding. The importance of the findings lay in the risk to essential workers who were required to use the road system while others could telework from home. Possibilities of similar shocks to travel demand in the future, and that traffic volumes may not recover to previous levels, are discussed, and policies are recommended that could reduce the risk of incapacitating and fatal crashes for continuing road users.

scholarly journals Measuring Safety Index for Pedestrian Path by Using AHP-GIS

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Athirah Illaina Mohammad Azlan ◽  
Nabilah Naharudin
Keyword(s):  
Pedestrian Safety ◽  
Rail Transit ◽  
Safety Index ◽  
Road Crashes ◽  
The Road ◽  
Transit Services ◽  
Pedestrian Crashes ◽  
Walking Environment ◽  
Spatial Problems

Pedestrian crashes account for approximately 7 percent of road death in Malaysia. Although the percentage is lower than other road crashes, this is still alarming. This is because, no matter what vehicles used by people, they still need to walk. This includes riding rail transit services as people need to walk to access the service and walk again to their destination after getting off the rail service. Rail services’ providers and government had been committed to provide a safe walking environment to the transit riders. Therefore, this study attempted to propose a framework to measure the safety index by using AHP-GIS. The integration of the two techniques had been widely implemented in decision making related to spatial problems. In any spatial problems, there is always more than one criterion that needs to be taken into consideration in the analysis with each of them have different degree of importance in the analysis. Thus, the role of AHP in this framework is to derive the weightage for the criteria while GIS will use the weightage in the spatial analysis. In this proposed framework, GIS analysis that will be used in analysing the pedestrian safety is the assessment based on the parameters located along the road together. In short, this framework will first indicate the degree of importance of the criteria influencing safety by using AHP which will then be used to determine the safety index for pedestrian path using GIS. The proposed framework is expected to help in deriving the safety index for pedestrian path to access selected rail transit stations which can be used as a reference by pedestrian to choose the safe route that they can used to reach their destination. It also can be used by the local authority for improving the walking environment in future.Keywords: pedestrian, safety, walkability, rail-transit, AHP, GIS

scholarly journals Spatial Equity Analysis of Nighttime Pedestrian Safety: Role of Land Use and Alcohol Establishments in Albuquerque, NM

2021 ◽  
pp. 036119812110302
Author(s):  
Benson Long ◽  
Nicholas N. Ferenchak
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Past Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sociodemographic Factors ◽  
Severe Injury ◽  
Severe Injuries ◽  
Lighting Condition ◽  
Crash Data ◽  
Pedestrian Crashes ◽  
Pedestrian Collisions

The United States experienced a 53% increase in pedestrian fatalities between 2009 and 2018, with 2018 having a 3.4% increase from 2017. Of the 2018 pedestrian fatalities with known lighting conditions, 76% occurred in dark/nighttime conditions, with 50% occurring between 6:00 and 11:59 p.m. Despite past research exploring several contributing characteristics for nighttime pedestrian crashes, there is limited research that investigates the spatial aspects of land use attributes and sociodemographic factors. Have these nighttime pedestrian collisions been concentrated in certain land uses? Could an establishment with the capacity to serve alcohol invoke a greater risk of pedestrian crashes? Does sociodemographic status correlate with clustering for fatal crashes, severe crashes, or both? To better understand the spatial characteristics of the recent increase in pedestrian collisions, we analyzed crash data from Albuquerque, New Mexico for pedestrian fatalities and severe injuries from 2013 to 2018 relative to lighting condition, land use (with a focus on alcohol establishments), and race/ethnicity on the block group level. We used confidence intervals and Getis-Ord Gi* statistics to verify the statistical integrity of the trends. Findings suggested that pedestrian fatality and severe injury rates were higher within a quarter mile of bars at night and in areas with elevated concentrations of minority populations. Pedestrian fatality and severe injury hot spots appeared to have higher percentages of non-white residents, coupled with lower sidewalk coverage and more arterials or collectors.

scholarly journals Analyzing Accident Injury Severity via an Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) Model

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shubo Wu ◽  
Quan Yuan ◽  
Zhongwei Yan ◽  
Qing Xu
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Injury Severity ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Road User ◽  
Gradient Boosting ◽  
Extreme Gradient Boosting ◽  
Pedestrian Crashes ◽  
Crash Injury Severity

Vehicle to vulnerable road user (VRU) crashes occupy a large proportion of traffic crashes in China, and crash injury severity analysis can support traffic managers to understand the implicit rules behind the crashes. Therefore, 554 VRUs-involved crashes are collected from January, 2017, to February, 2021, in a city in northern China, including 322 vehicle-pedestrian crashes and 232 vehicle-bicycle crashes. First, a descriptive statistical analysis is conducted to investigate the characteristics of VRUs-involved crashes. Second, the extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) model is introduced to identify the importance of risk factors (i.e., time of day, day of week, rushing hour, crash position, weather, and crash involvements) of VRUs-involved crashes. The statistical analysis demonstrates that the risk factors are closely related to VRUs-involved crash injury severity. Moreover, the results of XGBoost reveal that time of day has the greatest impact on VRUs-involved crashes, and crash position shows the minimum importance among these risk factors.

scholarly journals A Critical Review of Policies on Pedestrian Safety and a Case Study of New Zealand

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 5274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajjima Soathong ◽  
Douglas Wilson ◽  
Prakash Ranjitkar ◽  
Subeh Chowdhury
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Road Safety ◽  
Pedestrian Safety ◽  
Road Crashes ◽  
The Road ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Pedestrian Crashes ◽  
The Impact

Vulnerable road users contribute to nearly half of road deaths globally. In New Zealand, this group accounts for 26% of road deaths, which includes 8% of pedestrian crashes. This paper provides a critical review of the road safety policies from the pedestrian’s viewpoint for some of the best performing countries and discusses their effectiveness for the future. A case study is conducted for New Zealand to identify factors contributing to the pedestrian crashes and investigate the impact of the road safety policies on pedestrian crash trends. The policies are predominantly well informed by evidence-based approaches contributing to an overall reduction in the number of road crashes. However, little attention has been paid on pedestrian behaviour related to crashes. Finally, the paper makes recommendations for improving pedestrian safety to enable better safety outcomes that are closer to vision zero.

scholarly journals Clocks, Rhythms, Sex, and Hearts: How Disrupted Circadian Rhythms, Time-of-Day, and Sex Influence Cardiovascular Health

Biomolecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 883
Author(s):  
O. Hecmarie Meléndez-Fernández ◽  
James C. Walton ◽  
A. Courtney DeVries ◽  
Randy J. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Cardiovascular Disease ◽  
Cardiovascular Diseases ◽  
Circadian Rhythms ◽  
Cardiovascular Health ◽  
Biological Rhythms ◽  
Cardiovascular Function ◽  
The United States ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
And Behavior

Cardiovascular diseases are the top cause of mortality in the United States, and ischemic heart disease accounts for 16% of all deaths around the world. Modifiable risk factors such as diet and exercise have often been primary targets in addressing these conditions. However, mounting evidence suggests that environmental factors that disrupt physiological rhythms might contribute to the development of these diseases, as well as contribute to increasing other risk factors that are typically associated with cardiovascular disease. Exposure to light at night, transmeridian travel, and social jetlag disrupt endogenous circadian rhythms, which, in turn, alter carefully orchestrated bodily functioning, and elevate the risk of disease and injury. Research into how disrupted circadian rhythms affect physiology and behavior has begun to reveal the intricacies of how seemingly innocuous environmental and social factors have dramatic consequences on mammalian physiology and behavior. Despite the new focus on the importance of circadian rhythms, and how disrupted circadian rhythms contribute to cardiovascular diseases, many questions in this field remain unanswered. Further, neither time-of-day nor sex as a biological variable have been consistently and thoroughly taken into account in previous studies of circadian rhythm disruption and cardiovascular disease. In this review, we will first discuss biological rhythms and the master temporal regulator that controls these rhythms, focusing on the cardiovascular system, its rhythms, and the pathology associated with its disruption, while emphasizing the importance of the time-of-day as a variable that directly affects outcomes in controlled studies, and how temporal data will inform clinical practice and influence personalized medicine. Finally, we will discuss evidence supporting the existence of sex differences in cardiovascular function and outcomes following an injury, and highlight the need for consistent inclusion of both sexes in studies that aim to understand cardiovascular function and improve cardiovascular health.

Midblock Pedestrian Crash Predictions in a Systemic, Risk-Based Pedestrian Safety Process

2019 ◽  
Vol 2673 (11) ◽  
pp. 420-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley Kumfer ◽  
Libby Thomas ◽  
Laura Sandt ◽  
Bo Lan
Keyword(s):  
Systemic Risk ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Safety Management ◽  
Pedestrian Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Motor Vehicles ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Pedestrian Crashes

Although pedestrian fatalities and injuries in the United States decreased for decades at a rate similar to vehicule occupant fatalities, recent years have seen substantial increases in the pedestrian fatality counts and rate. Most concerning is that the growth in pedestrian fatalities seems to be outstripping any gains in safety. There may be many contributing factors to these increases, including changes in population dynamics, vehicular design, and travel trends, but under more traditional, crash-focused roadway safety management practices, systemic risk patterns are difficult to discern and address. Moreover, locations of risk for pedestrians may be overlooked because important, network-level data types are not collected or analyzed, and pedestrian crashes are often relatively infrequent at specific locations. This paper presents the results of efforts to develop the data profile and analysis methods for a risk-based, systemic pedestrian safety approach. Using 8 years of segment data from the entire street network of the city of Seattle, the research team developed safety performance functions for two types of collision between motor vehicles and pedestrians. These predictive models were used, in conjunction with identified risk factors and countermeasures effectiveness data, to develop a systemic screening tool to identify sites that may benefit from treatment. The end goal of this research is a framework that allows practitioners to identify and prioritize locations within a jurisdiction that are risky for pedestrians and to identify and implement effective, appropriate treatments at many such locations.

Evaluation of Protected Left-Turn Phasing and Leading Pedestrian Intervals Effects on Pedestrian Safety

2021 ◽  
pp. 036119812110255
Author(s):  
Elissa Goughnour ◽  
Daniel Carter ◽  
Craig Lyon ◽  
Bhagwant Persaud ◽  
Bo Lan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Empirical Bayes ◽  
Pedestrian Safety ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Health Issue ◽  
Crash Frequency ◽  
Left Turn ◽  
Crash Modification Factors ◽  
Pedestrian Crashes ◽  
Benefit Cost

Pedestrian safety is an important public health issue for the United States, with pedestrian fatalities representing approximately 16% of all traffic-related fatalities in 2016. Nationwide, transportation agencies are increasing their efforts to implement engineering-based improvements that increase pedestrian safety. These agencies need statistically rigorous crash modification factors (CMFs) to demonstrate the safety effectiveness of such countermeasures, and to apply in benefit–cost analyses to justify their implementation. This study focused on developing CMFs for two countermeasures that show promise for improving pedestrian safety: protected or protected/permissive left-turn phasing, and leading pedestrian intervals (LPIs). Data were acquired from four North American cities that had installed one or both of the countermeasures of interest: Chicago, IL; New York City, NY; Charlotte, NC; and Toronto, ON. The empirical Bayes before–after study design was applied to estimate the change in expected crash frequency for crashes following treatment. The protected left-turn phasing evaluation showed a benefit in reducing vehicle–vehicle injury crashes, but did not produce statistically significant results for vehicle–pedestrian crashes. For those crashes a disaggregate analysis did reveal that this treatment could be especially beneficial where pedestrian volumes exceed 5,500 per day. The LPI evaluation showed a statistically significant reduction in vehicle–pedestrian crashes with an estimated CMF of 0.87.

scholarly journals Towards Healthy Aging: Influence of the Built Environment on Elderly Pedestrian Safety at the Micro-Level

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (18) ◽  
pp. 9534
Author(s):  
Muhan Lv ◽  
Ningcheng Wang ◽  
Shenjun Yao ◽  
Jianping Wu ◽  
Lei Fang
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Green Space ◽  
Housing Price ◽  
Poisson Model ◽  
Pedestrian Safety ◽  
The Road ◽  
Traditional Markets ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Tracking Point

As vulnerable road users, elderly pedestrians are more likely to be injured in road crashes due to declining physical and perceptual capabilities. Most previous studies on the influence of the built environment on elderly pedestrian safety focused on intersections or areal units. Using a district of Shanghai as the study area, this research investigated the effects of the built environment at the road segment level with elderly pedestrian collision, taxi tracking point, point of interest, street view image, open street map, land use, housing price, and elderly population datasets. In particular, this research employed both Poisson and geographically weighted Poisson regression (GWPR) models to account for spatial nonstationarity. The Poisson model indicates that green space, sidewalks, and junctions on the roads significantly affected elderly pedestrian safety, and roads around nursing homes, schools, bus stops, metro stations, traditional markets, and supermarkets were hazardous for elderly pedestrians. The results of the GWPR model suggest that the influence of factors varied across the study area. Green space could decrease the risk of elderly pedestrian collisions only in areas without congested environments. Separations need to be installed between roadways and sidewalks to improve elderly road safety.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document