School-Aged Pedestrian–Vehicle Crash Vulnerability

Abstract

The analysis of pedestrian–vehicle crashes makes a significant contribution to sustainable pedestrian safety. Existing research is based mainly on the statistical analysis of traffic crashes involving pedestrians and their causes, without the identification of areas vulnerable to traffic crashes that involve pedestrians. The main aim of this paper is to identify areas vulnerable to school-aged pedestrian–vehicle crashes at a local level to support the local authorities in implementing new urban traffic safety measures. The vulnerable areas were determined by computing the severity index (SI) based on the number of fatal, serious, and slight casualties throughout the 2011–2016 period in a large urban agglomeration (Bucharest). As well as the vulnerable areas, the triggering factors and the time intervals related to school-aged pedestrian–vehicle crashes were identified. The outcomes of the study showed that the vulnerable areas were concentrated only in districts 2 and 4 of Bucharest, and they were associated with high vehicle speed and pedestrians’ unsafe crossing behavior. The findings revealed that speed and age are triggering factors in generating school-aged pedestrian–vehicle crashes. The identified time peaks with a high number of traffic crashes correspond to the afternoon time intervals, when scholars go home from school. The identification of the areas vulnerable to school-aged pedestrian crashes may help local authorities in identifying and implementing measures to improve traffic safety in large urban agglomerations.

Comparative Analyses of Parameters Influencing Children Pedestrian Behavior in Conflict Zones of Urban Intersections

“…A similar study done in the USA on the basis of data from six cities suggests that children pedestrian fatality rates are significantly higher in areas around a school or parks rather than in other locations [20]. A study done in Bucarest, Romania pointed to the fact that the number of accidents, because of unsafe crossing and car drivers not giving priority to pedestrians, constantly increased until the age of 15, after which traffic accidents involving school-aged children decreased continuously [21]. These data are confirmed with the statistics from the EU project [22] about age and gender influence on safety.…”

“…The limit for "safe behavior" of children in traffic is stated to be 15 years of age, and boys in childhood, including teenagers, exhibit a higher proportion of risky behavior than girls. Existing research also points to the need for additional interventions to improve the safety of children in certain parts of the city's transportation network: in residential and mixed-use zones [15,16,18,24,25] at intersections and/or at pedestrian crosswalks [18,19,21] and expectedly near schools and parks where children move around regularly and very often independently [20,21]. What can be also concluded is that studies selected in this review from different regions globally (USA, Canada, China, Estonia, Israel) pointed some common, but also many different, parameters that influence children's traffic behavior.…”

Geographic Information System in the Spatial Analysis of Urban Traffic Accidents in Cascavel, Paraná, Brazil

“…The profile of victims of traffic accidents in Cascavel corroborates that observed by Pintoet al 2016 Males showed a higher incidence of records in the afternoon (845; 35.77%) and evening (799; 33.83%), while femaleshad a higher incidence in the afternoon (522; 37.77%) (Figure 2b). Both sexes had high rates of occurrences in the afternoon, probably due to a greater flow of vehicles and pedestrians between 12:00 and 6:00 pm, result similar to that of Mendonça, Silva and Castro (2017) and Ivan, Benedek and Ciobanu (2019).…”

VIIRS Nighttime Light Data for Income Estimation at Local Level

“…For this research, we have selected 46 municipalities and cities (LAU1) with a population of more than 50,000 inhabitants (Appendix C), of the total 103 municipalities and 216 cities in Romania (Figure 1). These cities are the major economic hubs of the country [42][43][44], especially the capitalthe Municipality of Bucharest-the sixth city in the EU in terms of population (2,131,034 inhabitants in 2019), followed by six regional centers with a population exceeding 300,000 inhabitants: Iași (378,954 inhabitants), Timișoara (328,186 inhabitants), Cluj-Napoca (324,960 inhabitants), Constanța (313,021 inhabitants), Galați (304,050 inhabitants), and Craiova (301,269 inhabitants) [45]. With an important rural population (around 48% of the total population), the major municipalities of Romania are the leading places for innovation and smart city solutions, connecting large rural hinterlands with the global flow of capital, goods, and information [46,47].…”