The effects of pedestrian and bicycle exposure on crash risk in Minneapolis

Tao Tao

Greg Lindsey

University of Minnesota

Jason Cao

Jueyu Wang

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.2021.1980

Keywords: Pedestrian Bicycle; Exposure; Crash risk; Safety performance function; Equity


Abstract

Exposure to risk is a theoretically important correlate of crash risk, but many safety performance functions (SPFs) for pedestrian and bicycle traffic have yet to include the mode-specific measures of exposure. When SPFs are used in the systematic approach to assess network-wide crash risk, the omission of the exposure potentially could affect the identification of high-risk locations. Using crash data from Minneapolis, this study constructs and compares two sets of SPFs, one with pedestrian and bicycle exposure variables and the other without, for network-wide intersection and mid-block crash models. Inclusion of mode-specific exposure variables improves model validity and measures of goodness-of-fit and increases accuracy of predictions of pedestrian and bicycle crash risk. Including these exposure variables in the SPFs changes the distribution of high-risk locations, including the proportion of high-risk locations in low-income and racially concentrated areas. These results confirm the importance of incorporating exposure measures within SPFs and the need for pedestrian and bicycle monitoring programs to generate exposure data.


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