Assessing equity and urban/rural road safety disparities in the US

Wesley E. Marshall and Nicholas N. Ferenchak

Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, 2017, vol. 10, issue 4, 422-441

Abstract: Road fatalities erase more healthy years of life than cancer and heart disease combined. Considering safety as a health impact begs the question: Who is most impacted? Are there urban/rural differences? How equitable are impacts along racial/ethnic lines or with income differences? Via spatial analysis of over 970,000 geocoded US road fatalities over a 24-year period, our results show that Americans are not bearing these impacts equitably. We find road fatality disparities across racial/ethnic lines, particularly for pedestrians/bicyclists in predominantly black or Hispanic neighborhoods. Lower income neighborhoods suffer from vehicle occupant fatality rates 3.5X higher than wealthier neighborhoods. Also, residents of our most rural areas endure fatality rates approximately 6X higher than our most urban areas. This suggests that transportation and land use planning intended to facilitate more access with less mobility can reduce unnecessary exposure and lead to outcomes on par with the safest developed countries in the world.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1080/17549175.2017.1310748

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