Explaining Pedestrian Safety Experience at Urban and Suburban Street Crossings Considering Observed Conflicts and Pedestrian Counts

Abstract

This article presents an investigation of pedestrian conflicts and crash count models to learn which exposure measures and roadway or roadside characteristics significantly influence pedestrian safety at road crossings. Negative binomial and ordered proportional odds technique were used to estimate pedestrian conflict count and severity models. Pedestrian counts and conflicts data were collected at 100 locations throughout Connecticut. Pedestrian crash data were collected from the Connecticut Crash Data Repository. The results show that minor and serious conflicts are marginally significant in predicting total pedestrian crashes together with crossing distance and building setback. This suggests that these conflicts may be a good surrogate for crashes in analyzing pedestrian safety. Greater crossing distance and small building setbacks are found to be associated with larger numbers of pedestrian–vehicle crashes. This latter effect is not expected, because we expect vehicle speeds to be lower in areas where the building setback is small. This factor may account for the greater pedestrian activity and more complex interactions in such areas. Further research aimed at identifying a minimum length of time for accurate estimation of pedestrian volume and conflicts to relate to crashes is the subject of continuing investigation by the authors.