Abstract
Road safety research in low- and middle-income countries is limited, even though ninety percent of global road traffic fatalities are concentrated in these locations. In Colombia, road traffic injuries are the second leading source of mortality by external causes and constitute a significant public health concern in the city of Bogotá. Bogotá is among the top 10 most bike-friendly cities in the world. However, bicyclists are one of the most vulnerable road-users in the city. Therefore, assessing the pattern of mortality and understanding the variables affecting the outcome of bicyclists’ collisions in Bogotá is crucial to guide policies aimed at improving safety conditions. This study aims to determine the spatiotemporal trends in fatal and nonfatal collision rates and to identify the individual and contextual factors associated with fatal outcomes. We use confidence intervals, geo-statistics, and generalized additive mixed models (GAMM) corrected for spatial correlation. The collisions’ records were taken from Bogotá’s Secretariat of Mobility, complemented with records provided by non-governmental organizations (NGO). Our findings indicate that from 2011 to 2017, the fatal bicycling collision rates per bicyclists’ population have remained constant for females while decreasing 53 % for males. Additionally, we identified high-risk areas located in the west, southwest, and southeast of the city, where the rate of occurrence of fatal events is higher than what occurs in other parts of the city. Finally, our results show associated risk factors that differ by sex. Overall, we find that fatal collisions are positively associated with factors including collisions with large vehicles, the absence of dedicated infrastructure, steep terrain, and nighttime occurrence. Our findings support policy-making and planning efforts to monitor, prioritize, and implement targeted interventions aimed at improving bicycling safety conditions while accounting for gender differences.
Highlights
Bicycling presents substantial benefits to health and wellbeing of the population and is relevant for the development of a healthy and sustainable environment (Oja et al, 2011)
We show that during the evaluated period the bicycling fatal and nonfatal collision rates reductions differ by sex
The reductions in collision rates are explained by a three-fold increase in bicyclists population while collisions grew by 40% over the same period
Summary
Bicycling presents substantial benefits to health and wellbeing of the population and is relevant for the development of a healthy and sustainable environment (Oja et al, 2011). The limited information on bicyclistscollisions in Latin America indicates an increase in the total death counts of bicyclists as experienced by Mexico city (Secretaría de salud de los estados unidos de México, 2016), Chile (Gobierno de Chile - Comisión Nacional de Seguridad de Tránsito, 2018; Gobierno de Chile, 2016) and in Bogotá in the last decade (Concejo de Bogotá D.C., 2018; Gil, Tarazona, & Rincon, 2009; Noticiascaracol.com, 2017; Redacción Bogotá, 2016) These reports have the following limitations: First, estimates do not control exposure rates such as the number of trips, distance, or population which is crucial in measuring the trends in mortality. The identification of higher risk geographical areas for bicyclists has not been reported for Latin American cities, which is relevant for prioritizing policies and programs aimed at preventing collisions and fatalities of bicyclists (Yiannakoulias, Bennet, & Scott, 2012)
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