Data

A Review of ITS-Based Pedestrian Injury Countermeasures

Bechtel, Allyson K
Geyer, Judy
Ragland, David R
2003

Crashes between motor vehicles and pedestrians caused at least 4,882 deaths and about 78,000 injuries in 2001 in the United States. In recognition of these troubling statistics, many public and private institutions look to Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technologies. Few resources are available to provide a comprehensive summary of the effectiveness of these options. This report reviews previous scientific evaluation of red light enforcement cameras, illuminated walk signal push buttons, automated pedestrian detection systems for traffic signals, flashing crosswalk lights,...

Pedestrian Volume Modeling for Traffic Safety and Exposure Analysis:

Raford, Noah
Ragland, David R.
2005

This paper examines three types of pedestrian volume models in light of their usefulness for estimating pedestrian exposure for pedestrian safety research. The need for pedestrian flow data as part of pedestrian exposure and safety analysis is outlined, and the background of each type of model is discussed. It then selects the space syntax network analysis model to estimate pedestrian volumes for the city of Boston, Massachusetts. It was found that the model was able to accurately predict pedestrian flows (r-squared 0.81, p-value < 0.0001) after incorporating distance to transit...

A Database for Active Transportation Infrastructure and Volume

Proulx, Frank R.
Zhang, Yuanyuan, PhD
Grembek, Offer, PhD
2014

Information about pedestrian infrastructure and volume is indispensable to monitoring, evaluating, and improving the environment for comfortable and safe walking. However, determining and organizing the various types of data in a way that is easy to update and analyze can present challenges. This study designed and developed a relational database for pedestrian infrastructure and volume, and comprises two core components (node table and approach table) and several sub-components (tables for crosswalks, sidewalks, buffers, signs, transits, bikeways, bicycle parking, and volumes). Important...

Building a Highway Linear Referencing System from Preexisting Reference Marker Measurements for Transportation Data Management

Bigham, John
Kang, Sanghyeok
2013

To manage events associated with highways, data systems have been developed to store relevant event information. To reap the full benefits of geographic information system technologies, the relative locations can be integrated into a linear referencing system. The objective of this paper is to present a methodology for building a highway linear referencing system by applying preexisting marker measurements to a digital street network. The system was developed for locating motor vehicle collisions in California and resulted in improved accuracy compared to a previously developed system....

A 3D Computer Simulation Test of the Leibowitz Hypothesis

Barton, Joseph E.
Cohn, Theodore E.
2007

Do large objects appear to approach more slowly than smaller objects traveling at the same speed? If so then this might help explain the inordinately high accident rates involving large vehicles such as buses and trains. To test this, this study constructed an experiment using a 3D visual simulator in which different sized textured spheres approached at different speeds. We found that observers consistently judged the smaller sphere to be the faster, even in cases where the larger sphere was traveling at up to twice the speed of the smaller. Analysis of these results suggests that the...

Error Consideration for Geocoding Police Reported Collision Data in California

Bigham, John
Oum, Sang Hyouk
2014

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are frequently used to analyze collision data. In order to utilize GIS, the data must be geocoded, or assigned a latitude and longitude coordinate by translating a descriptive location onto street network data. However, the ability for accurate spatial analysis can be limited by geocoding errors that may occur due to limitations in data collection technologies, incorrect data entry due to human error, or inaccurate street reference data. In the state of California there is an increased opportunity for data entry errors, given the long sequence of events...

Limitations of Data on Cell Phone Involvement in Collisions: A Case Study of California

Griswold, Julia B.
Grembek, Offer
2014

With the increasing prevalence of mobile technology and high-profile crashes bringing attention to distracted driving, data on cell phone involvement in collisions is critical for understanding the extent of the problem, examining the effectiveness of policies, and developing interventions to improve safety. Some limitations of existing data have been previously identified, but this paper examines the specific case of California’s collision data. Temporal, geographic, and jurisdictional trends are analyzed to identify the source and type of inconsistencies in the cell phone involvement...

Fiona Norton

Research Data Analyst
Safe Transportation Research and Education Center
SafeTREC

Fiona Norton is a Research Data Analyst at UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC), where she supports multiple ongoing research projects.

She holds a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Quantitative Analysis and an M.S. in Quantitative Economics from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Estimating Pedestrian Accident Exposure: Automated Pedestrian Counting Devices Report

Bu, Fanping
Greene-Roesel, Ryan
Diogenes, Mara Chagas
Ragland, David R.
2007

Automated methods are commonly used to count motorized vehicles, but are not frequently used to count pedestrians. This is because the automated technologies available to count pedestrians are not very developed, and their effectiveness hasnot been widely researched. Moreover, most automated methods are used primarilyfor the purpose of detecting, rather than counting, pedestrians (Dharmaraju et al.,2001; Noyce and Dharmaraju, 2002; Noyce et al., 2006). Automated pedestrian counting technologies are attractive because they have the potential to reduce the labor costs associated with manual...

Evaluating Research on Data Linkage to Assess Underreporting of Pedestrian and Bicyclist Injury in Police Crash Data

Doggett, Sarah
Ragland, David R.
Felschundneff, Grace
2018

Traffic safety decisions are based predominantly on information from police collision reports. However, a number of studies suggest that such reports tend to underrepresent bicycle and pedestrian collisions. Underreporting could lead to inaccurate evaluation of crash rates and may under- or overestimate the effects of road safety countermeasures. This review examined ten studies that used data linkage to explore potential underreporting of pedestrian and/or bicyclist injury in police collision reports. Due to variations in definitions of reporting level, periods of study, and study...