Evaluating the "Safety In Numbers" Effect With Estimated Pedestrian Activity

Brendan Murphy, David Levinson and Andrew Owen
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Andrew Owen: Nexus (Networks, Economics, and Urban Systems) Research Group, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota

No 136, Working Papers from University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group

Abstract: Pedestrian and bicyclist collision risk assessment offers a powerful and informative tool in urban planning applications, and can greatly serve to inform proper placement of improvements and treatment projects. However, sufficiently detailed data regarding pedestrian and bicycle activity are not readily available for many urban areas, and thus the activity levels and collision risk levels must be estimated. This study builds upon other current work by the authors regarding pedestrian and bicycle activity estimation based on centrality and accessibility metrics, and extends the analysis techniques to estimation of pedestrian collision risk. The Safety In Numbers phenomenon, which refers to the observable effect that pedestrians become safer when there are more pedestrians present in a given area, i.e. that the individual per-pedestrian risk of a collision decreases with additional pedestrians, is a readily observed phenomenon that has been studied previously. The effect is investigated and observed in acquired traffic data, as well as estimated data, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Keywords: safety; walking; safety-in-numbers; crashes; traffic counts; network structure; accessibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J28 R14 R41 R42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tre and nep-ure
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http://hdl.handle.net/11299/179818 First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nex:wpaper:safetyinnumbers

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