Pedestrian safety models for urban environments with high roadside activities

Abstract

Virtually every traveller starts and ends as a pedestrian. Therefore walking, an essential part of a non-motorised transport mode, is very important especially in urban settings. To achieve safe walkable environments, practical tools are needed by transport professionals to assess and mitigate the influence of development on pedestrian safety, including pedestrian-vehicle accidents. Therefore, a better assessment of the risks faced by pedestrians is important to achieve a safer walking environment and to reduce the risks.In spite of the importance of roadside activities in urban areas, it appears that there are no sufficient studies which have given attention to them and investigated their influence on pedestrians’ safety. As a consequence, this study developed models to assess pedestrian safety and capture the effect of pedestrian and roadside activities’ intensity. The study found that the number of bus stoppings per unit of time, parking, pedestrian crossing and violations’ volume, the traffic speed variation, the number of intersecting side roads, in addition to through and intersecting traffic volume, were among the significant risk factors related to the pedestrian crash risk. These factors were then linked with the risk of a pedestrian crash using generalized regression models of which the Poisson model seem to be the most satisfactory.