Technical Seminar on Analysis of Pedestrian Injury by Spatial Multivariate Model  

By Ir Shirley LEUNG 

It is astonishing to note that in the United States in 2014, a pedestrian was injured every 8 minutes and killed every 1.5 hours in traffic accidents!  To better understand the risk factors contributing to the high pedestrian injuries, Professor Chandra R. Bhat, the Director of the Centre for Transportation Research and the Adnan Abou-Ayyash Centennial Professor in Transportation Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, developed a macro-level spatial multivariable model by using about 2,500 pedestrian injury cases in 2009 in the Manhattan area of the New York City.  In this technical seminar held on 15 August 2017 at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Prof. Bhat introduced his model for analyzing pedestrian injuries by four injury levels; variables like social demographics characteristics, land use, road network characteristics, and activity intensity; and census tracts.   

Interestingly, Prof. Bhat identified from the model that areas with low education, low income and high proportion of Hispanic population had a higher risk of serious pedestrian injury, and high income areas had fewer fatal pedestrian injuries.  He explained that less educated and low-income people might be more reckless and might not understand well the traffic signs and symbols, and drivers were found to have racial bias and might not pay caution to the Hispanic pedestrians.  He pointed out that areas with the above socioeconomic characteristics could be hot spots of pedestrian injuries and suggested some engineering and behavioral counter-measures such as continuous footpath, better lighting, campaigns that reduce reckless and distracted driving, pictorial symbols/signs to make their understanding easier, promotion on minority tolerance so that motorists would treat all pedestrians in the same way as opposed to yielding less to minorities.

The seminar was insightful and informative.  All the organizers of this seminar, including The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies and the HKIE Logistics and Transportation Division, appreciated Prof. Bhat’s sharing, in which we gained a deeper understanding of the factors contributing to pedestrian injuries.