Comparative Analysis of Fatal Pedestrian Crashes between Kansas and USA

Abstract

Due to the increasing trend of population growth and urbanization, pedestrians form one of the largest single road user groups. However, they are the most neglected group among all road users. Pedestrian safety is now a growing concern in the USA. Identifying the factors associated with fatal pedestrian crashes plays a key role in developing efficient and effective strategies to enhance pedestrian safety. This study addresses safety issues by identifying contributory factors associated with fatal pedestrian crashes in Kansas and the USA. For Kansas, the study uses KARS (Kansas Accident Reporting System) database while for the USA FARS (Fatality Analysis Reporting System) database has been used. Different variables considered in this study are human variables (age, and gender), environmental variables (atmospheric condition and light condition), time (time of day, day of week, and crash month), location (intersection vs. mid-block), and roadway variables (speed limit). Different factors that are found to have an association with fatal pedestrian crashes are male pedestrians, older pedestrians, weekend, off peak hours, winter months, dark hours, non-intersection, clear atmospheric conditions, higher speed limit. The findings from Kansas have been compared with that from the USA. This study helps to implement potential countermeasures by identifying the factors that have an association with fatal pedestrian crashes.