STC Matching Grant Annual Report

While the conventional approach to safety planning has emphasized crash analysis with police-reported crash information, transportation professionals increasingly recognize the importance of identifying potential crash risk and considering environmental characteristics. In this proactive approach, individuals’ perception of crash risk provides important information in identifying potential crash risk. As built environment characteristics such as the presence of crosswalks, sidewalks, and number of lanes, are expected to influence the levels of pedestrian and bicycle safety, this study examined how perceived and actual crash risk are related with each other and with respect to the built environment where the crashes occur. Our results showed that residents who live in low density-single residential neighborhoods are more likely to perceive their neighborhood as dangerous. Meanwhile more compact neighborhoods and neighborhoods with higher mixture of land uses were associated with higher crash rates. The results of path analysis confirmed that simultaneous but opposite relationship exist between perceived and actual crash risks. Thus our model indicates that actual crash risks increases perceived crash risk while increases in perceived crash risk are negatively associated related with actual crash rates. Consequently low density and non-mixed land uses increase individuals perception of crash risk, and increased perception of risk and unfriendly environment for pedestrian and bikers reduces actual crash rates as a result of avoidance of walking and bicycling activities. From a policy standpoint, more attention and proactive interventions are desirable in suburban areas beyond the areas with high crash rates, as some of these areas have high perceived risks.