Promoting Safe Walking and Cycling to Improve Public Health: Lessons From The Netherlands and Germany

Pucher, I John; Dijkstra, Lewis

doi:10.2105/ajph.93.9.1509

Cited by 647 publications

(388 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The British Department of Transport, for example, found that the risk of pedestrian death in crashes rises from 5% at 20 mph to 45% at 30 mph and 85% at 40 mph. 4 The link between speed and road trauma is clear in the road safety literature, even for minor changes in speed. Increasing traffic speeds by only 1 km/h can lead to a 3% increase in injury crashes and a 4-5% increase in fatal crashes.…”

Section: Existing Understandings Of the Links Between Speed And Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speed Kills: The Complex Links Between Transport, Lack of Time and Urban Health

Tranter

2010

J Urban Health

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Road safety experts understand the contribution of speed to the severity and frequency of road crashes. Yet, the impact of speed on health is far more subtle and pervasive than simply its effect on road safety. The emphasis in urban areas on increasing the speed and volume of car traffic contributes to ill-health through its impacts on local air pollution, greenhouse gas production, inactivity, obesity and social isolation. In addition to these impacts, a heavy reliance on cars as a supposedly 'fast' mode of transport consumes more time and money than a reliance on supposedly slower modes of transport (walking, cycling and public transport). Lack of time is a major reason why people do not engage in healthy behaviours. Using the concept of 'effective speed', this paper demonstrates that any attempt to 'save time' through increasing the speed of motorists is ultimately futile. Paradoxically, if planners wish to provide urban residents with more time for healthy behaviours (such as exercise and preparing healthy food), then, support for the 'slower' active modes of transport should be encouraged. INTRODUCTIONDecreasing the speed of urban transport can have positive impacts on the economy, the environment and health. This paper outlines the main themes of existing research on these impacts and then explores the possibility that there is a more subtle, but no less important, link between speed and health. The paper argues that speed has a cost that can be measured in money and in time. This can produce a paradox whereby 'faster' modes of transport lead to a loss of time. Lack of time, or time pressure, has been identified as an important factor in urban health, due to its negative impact on mental health but also due to its impact on the ability or willingness of people to engage in physical exercise or to avoid fast (junk) food.The arguments about the health impacts of speed apply most clearly to the use of private motor vehicles, and this paper focuses on the health impacts of increasing the speed of cars. However, some of the arguments are also relevant to other highspeed modes. For example, high-speed trains can encourage urban sprawl, the complex negative health impacts of which are outlined below.Tranter is with the School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, UNSW@ADFA, Canberra, ACT, Australia.Correspondence: Paul Joseph Tranter, PhD, School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, UNSW@ADFA, Canberra, ACT, Australia. (E-mail: paul.tranter@adfa.edu.au) EXISTING UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE LINKS BETWEEN SPEED AND HEALTHSpeed is most commonly seen as a health issue in relation to road crashes. There are several other ways in which the speed of motorised traffic is linked to factors that have clear negative health impacts. Increasing the speed of motorised traffic increases levels of pollution. 1 High car speeds can affect levels of physical activity through reductions in active transport, including children's independent mobility. Local social interactions are disrupted by high...

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Section: Existing Understandings Of the Links Between Speed And Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speed Kills: The Complex Links Between Transport, Lack of Time and Urban Health

Tranter

2010

J Urban Health

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“…The US has a notoriously poor safety record relative to other developed countries. According to a study by Pucher and Dijkstra (2003), after controlling for travel exposure in terms of mileage, US pedestrians (cyclists) are roughly 3 times (2 times) more likely to get killed in traffic accidents than German pedestrians (cyclists) and over 6 times (3 times) more likely than Dutch pedestrians (cyclists). Pucher and Dijkstra also compared fatality rates per mile of travel by different modes in the US, and concluded that pedestrians were 23 times more likely to get killed than car occupants, and bicyclists were 12 times more likely.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A mixed generalized ordered response model for examining pedestrian and bicyclist injury severity level in traffic crashes

Eluru

Bhat

Hensher

2008

Accident Analysis & Prevention

508

229

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This paper proposes an econometric structure for injury severity analysis at the level of individual accidents that recognizes the ordinal nature of the categories in which injury severity are recorded, while also allowing flexibility in capturing the effects of explanatory variables on each ordinal category and allowing heterogeneity in the effects of contributing factors due to the moderating influence of unobserved factors. The model developed here, referred to as the mixed generalized ordered-response logit (MGORL) model, generalizes the standard ordered-response models used in the extant literature for injury severity analysis. To our knowledge, this is the first such formulation to be proposed and applied in the econometric literature in general, and in the safety analysis literature in particular.The MGORL model is applied to examine non-motorist injury severity in accidents in the USA, using the 2004 General Estimates System (GES) database. The empirical findings emphasize the inconsistent results obtained from the standard ordered response model. An important policy result from our analysis is that the general pattern and relative magnitude of elasticity effects of injury severity determinants are similar for pedestrians and bicyclists. The analysis also suggests that the most important variables influencing non-motorist injury severity are the age of the individual (the elderly are more injury-prone), the speed limit on the roadway (higher speed limits lead to higher injury severity levels), location of crashes (those at signalized intersections are less severe than those elsewhere), and time-of-day (darker periods lead to higher injury severity).

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“…In cross-country comparisons, Pucher and Dijkstra (2003) found that, after controlling for travel exposure in terms of mileage, U.S. pedestrians (bicyclists) are about 3 times (2 times) as likely to get killed in traffic accidents as German pedestrians (bicyclists) and over 6 times (3 times) as likely to be killed as Dutch pedestrians (bicyclists). In another more recent study at a metropolitan area level (rather than a national level that can mask risk variation within countries), McAndrews (2011) observed that the risk of a fatal traffic crash injury for pedestrians in San Francisco is 4.1 times higher than for pedestrians in Stockholm, while the corresponding figure is 1.7 for bicyclists.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

On accommodating spatial dependence in bicycle and pedestrian injury counts by severity level

Narayanamoorthy

Paleti

Bhat

2013

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological

126

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In loving memory of my grandmother N. N. Rugmani AcknowledgmentsFirst and foremost, I must express appreciation to Dr. Chandra Bhat, with whom it has been a pleasure and a privilege to work. I thank him for his insights and advice as also for the stimulus and motivation to dig deep into research. I am grateful to him for showing me how to make sense of mathematical models and for instilling in me the notion that writing should be simple, direct, logical, and tight. His invaluable ideas and the high standards that he sets for himself and his students form the backbone of

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Promoting Safe Walking and Cycling to Improve Public Health: Lessons From The Netherlands and Germany

Abstract: A wide range of measures are available to improve the safety of walking and cycling in American cities, both to reduce fatalities and injuries and to encourage walking and cycling.

Cited by 647 publications

References 13 publications

Speed Kills: The Complex Links Between Transport, Lack of Time and Urban Health

Speed Kills: The Complex Links Between Transport, Lack of Time and Urban Health

A mixed generalized ordered response model for examining pedestrian and bicyclist injury severity level in traffic crashes

On accommodating spatial dependence in bicycle and pedestrian injury counts by severity level

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