The Influence of Built Environment Factors on Elderly Pedestrian Road Safety in Cities: The Experience of Madrid

Daniel Gálvez-Pérez, Begoña Guirao, Armando Ortuño and Luis Picado-Santos
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Daniel Gálvez-Pérez: Departamento de Ingeniería del Transporte, Territorio y Urbanismo, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Calle del Profesor Aranguren, 3, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Begoña Guirao: Departamento de Ingeniería del Transporte, Territorio y Urbanismo, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Calle del Profesor Aranguren, 3, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Armando Ortuño: Escuela Politécnica Superior, Universidad de Alicante, 03690 San Vicente del Raspeig, Spain
Luis Picado-Santos: CERIS, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 4, 1-20

Abstract: With the progressive ageing of the population, the study of the relations between road safety and elderly users is becoming increasingly relevant. Although the decline of pedestrian skills in the elderly has been widely studied in the literature, few studies have been devoted to the contributing built environmental factors of the elderly pedestrian collisions, such as the sidewalk density, the presence of traffic lights, or even some indicator related to land use or the socioeconomic features of the urban fabric. This paper contributes to the limited literature on elderly pedestrian safety by applying a negative binomial regression to a set of built environmental variables to study the occurrence of accidents involving elderly and younger (non-elderly) pedestrians in Madrid (Spain) between 2006 and 2018. The model considers a selection of built environmental factors per city district, linked to land use, infrastructure, and socioeconomic indicators. Results have highlighted that the elderly pedestrian collisions could be avoided with the existence of a wider sidewalk in the district and a greater traffic lights density. Unlike younger pedestrian accidents, these accidents are much more favored in ageing districts with higher traffic flows.

Keywords: elderly pedestrians; road safety; road traffic collisions; accident analysis; built environment; street design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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