Book Description
Presently there is no common method or measure to estimate the pedestrian crashes at intersections. Consequently the total number of pedestrian crashes at an intersection depends on pedestrian exposure or activity at the intersections. In general, pedestrian activity at a signalized intersection depends on the land use characteristics, demographic characteristics (population, household units), socio-economic characteristics (mean income, total employment), road network characteristics (average speed, number of approaches, number of lanes, presence of median), land use characteristics ( single family residential area, urban commercial residential area, commercial center area) and accessibility to public transit systems. These characteristics could be used as explanatory variables to estimate risk to pedestrian at a signalized intersection. The focus of this paper is to study the relationship between pedestrian crashes and explanatory variables, and develop models to estimate risk to pedestrians at signalized intersections. Data collected for 176 signalized intersections in the City of Charlotte, North Carolina are used to study the relationship and develop models using generalized linear models based on negative binomial analysis distribution. The number of pedestrian crashes at each signalized intersection is considered as the dependent variable and the land use characteristics, demographic characteristics, socio-economic characteristics, road network characteristics, number of transit stops and other explanatory variables are considered as the independent variables. The models developed could be proactively used to estimate risk to pedestrians and could be helpful in identifying suitable countermeasures to improve pedestrian safety at signalized intersections.