R4: Completing the Picture of Traffic Injuries: Understanding Data Needs and Opportunities for road Safety
Research Team
Principal Investigator
Chris Cherry
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Co-Investigators
Eric Dumbaugh
Florida Atlantic University
Louis Merlin
Florida Atlantic University
David R. Ragland
University of California, Berkeley
Laura Sandt
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Funding Organization
Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety (CSCRS)
Summary
In this study, we introduced a new approach to evaluate road safety that focuses on the home address of individuals (i.e., home-based approach) who were directly involved in traffic crashes instead of the location of the crashes (location-based approach). While LBA explores the geographical distribution of traffic crashes by focusing on the location of traffic crashes, HBA considers the socioeconomics associated with the location of the person involved in the crash. This approach could be used to explore the road safety disparities by considering the factors surrounding home-address of the crash victims.
Comparing of the metropolitan areas exhibited the spatial variation in both approaches’ crash rate. The LBA crash rate could be attributed to the activity and infrastructure quality in each metropolitan area. In addition to the activity and infrastructure quality, HBA crash rate also reflects the safety culture. The difference in the safety culture (e.g., drunk driving, seatbelts) of residents of different metropolitans could be investigated in future studies.
In this study, we used GWPR model to address the unobserved heterogeneity in both approaches. The difference between model specifications in HBA and LBA and weak correlation between crash frequency and crash rate in both approaches demonstrated the merits of HBA as a complementary solution in addition to the LBA method as an index to evaluate road safety and identify areas where their residents have a higher likelihood of involvement in traffic crashes.
GWPR model findings indicate that residents who live in the neighborhoods with higher income, higher white race population, more use of an active mode of transportation are less likely to be involved in a traffic crash. Proper safety campaigns could be used to address the safety concerns in the HBA hotspots, particularly by focusing on behavioral interventions that contribute to higher crash risk and injury burden (e.g., speeding). HBA may also be used in road safety campaign design as a solution to prioritize neighborhoods for allocating educational resources.
Publications
- Hezaveh, A. M., & Cherry, C. R. (2019). Neighborhood-Level Factors Affecting Seat Belt Use.Accident Analysis and Prevention, 122, 153–161. doi:10.1016/j.aap.2018.10.005
- Hezaveh, A. M., Zavareh, M. F., Cherry, C. R., & Nordfjærn, T. (2018). Errors and violations in relation to bicyclists’ crash risks: Development of the Bicycle Rider Behavior Questionnaire (BRBQ).Journal of Transport & Health, 8, 289–298. doi:10.1016/j.jth.2017.11.003
Learn more about this project on the CSCRS website.