Journal of Transport and Land Use

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

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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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