Pedestrian Fatality Data Quality: Problems and Definitions

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 eradicate preventable deaths and improve safety for all modes. The authors analyzed data from one year of pedestrian deaths in New Jersey, the US state with the highest share of pedestrian deaths, and found that the data is severely lacking. Roughly one quarter of the 157 pedestrian deaths reported in New Jersey in 2012 should not have been classified as pedestrians. Some of these fatalities should not be classified as pedestrians using the reporting definitions required by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), including some that are outright errors. Other fatalities are consistent with NHTSA’s definition of a pedestrian, but are questionable from a planning and data analysis perspective, as most planners and decision makers would not consider the victims to be pedestrians. The authors discuss these alternate definitions and classify each fatality accordingly. Implications for research and planning are discussed and we emphasize the need to both improve data collection and management, as well as for NHTSA to reconsider how they define and track pedestrian fatalities.

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• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANB10 Standing Committee on Transportation Safety Management.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Noland, Robert B
  • Klein, Nicholas J
  • Sinclair, James
  • Brown, Charles
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Classification; Data collection; Data quality; Fatalities; Pedestrians
• Geographic Terms: New Jersey
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors; I84: Personal Injuries;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01588967
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-0410
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 29 2016 4:30PM