Who might be affected by crashes? Identifying areas susceptible to crash injury risk and their major contributing factors

Abstract

The growth of metropolitan regions in the U.S. leads to transportation safety issues related to roadway crashes that imperil personal well-being. Previous studies have investigated the environmental, traffic, roadway, and human related factors that influence the frequency and severity of crashes, and focused on the spatial distribution of roadway crashes. However, unfavourable health and safety consequences of crashes for different demographic locations and socioeconomic units have not been fully understood from an aggregate perspective. To achieve this understanding, our paper proposes a new concept called crash injury risk susceptibility (CRIS) and a novel two-step approach with the following components: (1) a GIS-based spatial analysis to discover the census units that are susceptible to the risk imposed by crashes and their severities, and (2) a statistical investigation to identify various elements that are associated with this risk. The analysis is carried out in the Tampa Bay region of Florida, U.S. Findings illustrate that some areas within Tampa Bay region face an elevated susceptibility to crash injury risk. As such, this study contributes to discourse on traffic safety and social sustainability, which helps enhance overall public welfare.

KEYWORDS:

• Public health and safety
• crash injury risk susceptibility
• spatial analysis
• aggregate injury risk variation

Acknowledgments

We also thank the Florida Department of Transportation for providing the roadway data. The opinions, results, and findings expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the United States Department of Transportation, The Florida Department of Transportation, The Center for Accessibility and Safety for an Aging Population, the Florida State University, the Florida A&M University, or the University of North Florida.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by United States Department of Transportation [grant number DTRT13-G-UTC42], and administered by the Center for Accessibility and Safety for an Aging Population (ASAP) at the Florida State University (FSU), Florida A&M University (FAMU), and University of North Florida (UNF).