Impact of urban form and street infrastructure on pedestrian-motorist collisions

This study examines the impact of urban form and street infrastructure on pedestrian safety in Atlanta, Georgia, and Boston, Massachusetts. With a significant rise in pedestrian fatalities over the past decade, understanding how cities' built environments influence safety is critical. We conduc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of injury control and safety promotion 2024-07, Vol.31 (3), p.521-533
Main Authors: Foreman, Taylor, Lin, Meimei, Tu, Wei, Yarbrough, Robert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Automobile drivers
Built environment
Cities
Complex variables
Fatalities
Infrastructure
Land use
land use diversity
Pedestrian crossings
Pedestrian safety
Population density
Population studies
Safety
spatial autoregressive models
Speed limits
Statistical analysis
Statistical tests
street infrastructure
Streets
Traffic accidents & safety
Urban environments
urban form
Urban planning
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Summary:This study examines the impact of urban form and street infrastructure on pedestrian safety in Atlanta, Georgia, and Boston, Massachusetts. With a significant rise in pedestrian fatalities over the past decade, understanding how cities' built environments influence safety is critical. We conducted geospatial analyses and statistical tests, revealing unique patterns in each city. Atlanta's sprawling, motorist-oriented layout is associated with increased pedestrian accidents, particularly at crosswalks, due to limited land use diversity, arterial roads, and streets with high speed limits and multiple lanes. In contrast, Boston's compact, pedestrian-oriented design leads to improved safety, featuring safer pedestrian crossings, greater land use diversity, reduced arterial roads and lower speed limits on single-lane streets. This study also highlights the importance of diverse urban forms and pedestrian infrastructure in shaping pedestrian safety. While population density and land use diversity impact accident rates, the presence of crosswalks and street configurations play crucial roles. Our findings underscore the urgency for urban planners to prioritize pedestrian safety through targeted interventions, such as enhancing crosswalks, reducing speed limits and promoting mixed land use. Future research should explore additional variables, alternative modelling techniques and non-linear approaches to gain a more comprehensive understanding of these complex relationships.
ISSN:1745-7300
1745-7319
1745-7319
DOI:10.1080/17457300.2024.2351961