Open AccessThe effects of pedestrian and bicycle exposure on crash risk in Minneapolis
Author(s) -
Tao Tao,
Greg Lindsey,
Jason Cao,
Jueyu Wang
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of transport and land use
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.05
H-Index - 27
ISSN - 1938-7849
DOI - 10.5198/jtlu.2021.1980
Subject(s) - pedestrian , crash , transport engineering , poison control , risk assessment , statistics , engineering , environmental health , computer science , mathematics , medicine , computer security , programming language
Exposure to risk is a theoretically important correlate of crash risk, but many safety performance functions (SPFs) for pedestrian and bicycle traffic have yet to include the mode-specific measures of exposure. When SPFs are used in the systematic approach to assess network-wide crash risk, the omission of the exposure potentially could affect the identification of high-risk locations. Using crash data from Minneapolis, this study constructs and compares two sets of SPFs, one with pedestrian and bicycle exposure variables and the other without, for network-wide intersection and mid-block crash models. Inclusion of mode-specific exposure variables improves model validity and measures of goodness-of-fit and increases accuracy of predictions of pedestrian and bicycle crash risk. Including these exposure variables in the SPFs changes the distribution of high-risk locations, including the proportion of high-risk locations in low-income and racially concentrated areas. These results confirm the importance of incorporating exposure measures within SPFs and the need for pedestrian and bicycle monitoring programs to generate exposure data.