Pedestrian exposure to risk in housing areas: D. H. Crompton. Transport and Road Research Laboratory, Crowthorne, Berkshire, England, 1982. 22 pp.

Abstract

A large-scale study has been carried out for the U.K. Transport and Road Research Laboratory to determine levels of pedestrian activity in representative housing areas and to examine their influence, along with other factors, on annual pedestrian casualty rates. Data were collected on land use and layout, population and socioeconomic characteristics, number of pedestrians (by age and sex), traffic, and casualties to pedestrians in 474 squares of 1 km each, distributed in the regions of England and Wales. Analysis of these data has resulted in a group of models in which annual casualty rates per square kilometer of housing area are explained in terms of pedestrian and traffic data, population and census data, and land use and layout data. The best of the models (which were tested against an independent data set) explain up to 77 percent of the variation about the mean casualty rate (R = 0.88). But standard errors of the estimate are disappointingly high. Factors influencing the size of these errors are examined, and possible practical applications of the models are discussed.