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Abstract
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Introduction
Pedestrian safety is gaining nationwide attention in the recent years with increasing fatalities and serious injuries relative to other modes of transportation. The percentage of pedestrian fatalities in all traffic fatalities in Florida clearly highlights the importance of the vulnerability. Considering the importance of 'Safe System' approach, this study aims to investigate the contributing factors for different speed limits in vehicle-pedestrian crashes and resulting injury severities.
Method
This study explored the pedestrian crashes over three speed limit zones, namely, low- (≤25 mph), medium- (30-40 mph) and high-speed (45-70 mph) roadways in Florida. Utilizing 2017 (inclusive) crash data in Florida, random parameters multinomial logit models with unobserved heterogeneity in means and variances were estimated. The crash data include a wide variety of factors related to the spatial, temporal, vehicle and traffic characteristics, environmental characteristics, roadway attributes, and human factors.
Results
The model estimates indicated that there were significant differences in pedestrian-injury severities in these speed limit zones. It is noteworthy that crashes involving pedestrian had many explanatory variables that produced marginal effects varying across low-, medium-, and high-speed limit zones. More importantly, the likelihood of pedestrian injury severity at high-speed limit zones is about 3.1 times higher for roadways with 40,000 vehicles per day, 3.2 times higher for two-way roads with positive median barrier, and 1.7 times higher for urban principal roadways relative than those at medium speed limit zones. The model results also indicate that the likelihood of severe pedestrian injury is higher for District 1, afternoon peak (4-6 p.m.), turn-lane, and dark condition on high-speed limit zones.
Conclusion
Formulation of countermeasures to mitigate pedestrian injury severity should be considered separately for three distinct speed limit zones. These countermeasures include the vehicle technology, roadway-infrastructure design, drivers' awareness, and pedestrians' education interventions to minimize the system kinematic energy.
Language: en |