Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety (CPBS): Travel Behavior as a Road Safety Strategy – How Exposure is Influenced by Land Use and Infrastructure (Webinar)

This webinar examines how exposure to kinetic energy introduced by motor vehicles influences road safety. The presentation covers a variety of geographies with a specific focus on a recent paper that explored 227 urban areas in 45 US states. The relationship between exposure-based measures—including automobile mode share, vehicle miles travelled (VMT), and commute time—and motor vehicle occupant, pedestrian, and bicyclist fatalities is explored while controlling for other transportation and socioeconomic factors. Findings suggest that improving road safety requires not only reducing crash severity and conflicts but also reducing the underlying exposure to kinetic energy in the road system in the first place.