Built environment influence on the incidence of elderly pedestrian collisions in a medium-large city in southern Brazil: a spatial analysis

Abstract

Trauma disproportionately affects vulnerable road users, especially the elderly. We analyzed the spatial distribution of elderly pedestrians struck by vehicles in the urban area of Maringa city, from 2014 to 2018. Hotspots were obtained by kernel density estimation and wavelet analysis. The relationship between spatial relative risks (RR) of elderly run-overs and the built environment was assessed through Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Incidents were more frequent in the central and southeast regions of the city, where the RR was up to 2.58 times higher. The QCA test found a significant association between elderly pedestrian victims and the presence of traffic lights, medical centers/hospitals, roundabouts and schools. There is an association between higher risk of elderly pedestrians collisions and specific elements of built environments in Maringa, providing fundamental data to help guide public policies to improve urban mobility aimed at protecting vulnerable road users and planning an age-friendly city.

Keywords:

• pedestrian collisions
• elderly health
• spatial analysis
• vulnerable road users
• built environment

Acknowledgments

The present work was carried out with the support of the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior Brasil (CAPES) - Financing Code 001. We would like to thank the Health Sciences Program (PCS) for its knowledge and reasoning and the Technologies and Geoprocessing Group in Health (GETS) for providing support with geospatial analysis, and Ashley J. Phillips for her help in English revision.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.