Non-Motorist Fatalities: A Deep Dive

Non-motorist fatalities pose a serious concern to traffic safety initiatives within the state of Utah. Past research has examined the characteristics associated with fatal pedestrian crashes in depth, however, considerably less study has been done to understand the contextual factors surrounding these incidents. Pedestrian crashes may be influenced by environmental factors, surrounding infrastructure, availability of crossing locations, and numerous other factors. This research consists of examining non-motorist crashes in a holistic way to identify characteristics which are present in areas where these crashes result in a fatality. This study utilized several different datasets and analysis techniques including multinomial logistic (MNL) regression to evaluate evidence with the goal of creating an effective representation of crashes. Analysis of data revealed that nearly 40% of pedestrian fatalities and 33% of cyclist fatalities occur within a geographic envelope where installing a safe crossing is prohibited. Approximately 7.3% of suspected serious bike crashes and only 6% of fatal bike crashes occurred in or near a bike lane. Additionally, suspected serious and fatal pedestrian crashes were even less likely to occur on roadways with bike lanes present. Fewer than 4% of serious and fewer than 2.5% of fatal pedestrian crashes occurred near a bike lane. This Utah Department of Transportation report is available online through the US Department of Transportation's ROSA P collection at https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/67218