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Neighborhood Influences on Vehicle-Pedestrian Crash Severity

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Abstract

Socioeconomic factors are known to be contributing factors for vehicle-pedestrian crashes. Although several studies have examined the socioeconomic factors related to the location of the crashes, limited studies have considered the socioeconomic factors of the neighborhood where the road users live in vehicle-pedestrian crash modelling. This research aims to identify the socioeconomic factors related to both the neighborhoods where the road users live and where crashes occur that have an influence on vehicle-pedestrian crash severity. Data on vehicle-pedestrian crashes that occurred at mid-blocks in Melbourne, Australia, was analyzed. Neighborhood factors associated with road users’ residents and location of crash were investigated using boosted regression tree (BRT). Furthermore, partial dependence plots were applied to illustrate the interactions between these factors. We found that socioeconomic factors accounted for 60% of the 20 top contributing factors to vehicle-pedestrian crashes. This research reveals that socioeconomic factors of the neighborhoods where the road users live and where the crashes occur are important in determining the severity of the crashes, with the former having a greater influence. Hence, road safety countermeasures, especially those focussing on the road users, should be targeted at these high-risk neighborhoods.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge that this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

    Alireza Toran Pour & Sara Moridpour

  2. School of Business IT and Logistics, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

    Richard Tay

  3. Department of Infrastructure Engineering, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Abbas Rajabifard

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  1. Alireza Toran Pour
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  4. Abbas Rajabifard
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Correspondence to Alireza Toran Pour.

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Toran Pour, A., Moridpour, S., Tay, R. et al. Neighborhood Influences on Vehicle-Pedestrian Crash Severity. J Urban Health 94, 855–868 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-017-0200-z

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