Higher Pedestrian Fatalities in Larger Cities? Scaling Analysis of Over 115 to 161 Large U.S. Cities

Abstract

We examine the scaling relationship of pedestrian fatality counts as a function of the population size of 115 to 161 large U.S cities during the period of 1994 to 2011. We also examine the relationship of non-pedestrian and total traffic fatality counts as well. We used both annual and panel data bivariate and multivariate regression models.We found the scaling relationship display economy of scale or sublinear for pedestrian fatality. The relationship displays superlinear relationship in case of non-pedestrian fatality. When the relationship was examined by the subgroup of cities with different population sizes, the most pronounced scaling relationships was discovered for the group of mega cities. Implication from these findings will be presented.