Citation

Noland RB, Sinclair JA, Klein NJ, Brown C. J. Transp. Health 2017; 7: 3-9.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jth.2017.04.006

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Accurate data on pedestrian fatalities is of upmost importance to public health officials, transportation planners, police, and policy-makers. It is used to make strategic decisions about when and where to invest scarce resources to reduce preventable deaths and improve safety for all modes. We analyzed data from one year of pedestrian deaths in New Jersey, the US state with the highest share of pedestrian deaths, and found the data unreliable and inconsistent. Roughly one fifth of the 157 pedestrian deaths reported in New Jersey in 2012 should not be classified as a pedestrian, based on reporting definitions required by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), as well as based on common definitions of pedestrians by policy-makers and planners. This is further compounded by some records in NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) that are not included in the state database. NHTSA's definition of a pedestrian is also sorely lacking for conducting analyses of safety issues. We discuss the data problems we identified and also link this to alternate definitions of how to classify pedestrian fatalities. Implications for research and planning are discussed and we emphasize the need to both improve data collection and management at the state level, as well as for NHTSA to reconsider how they define and track pedestrian fatalities.

Language: en

Keywords

Safety; Pedestrians; Data; Fatal crashes