Despite the fact that pedestrian road traffic casualties in the OECD countries presented a constantly decreasing trend during the last years, the number of pedestrians involved in road accidents in several countries and as a whole is still unacceptable and illustrates the need for even greater efforts with respect to pedestrian safety. Most importantly, it is observed that the peak or abnormal situations remain practically unchanged over this period, suggesting a persistence of the basic pedestrian risk factors. In particular, in 2006 there were more than 78,000 fatalities in road traffic accidents in 23 OECD countries, out of which more than 11,000 were pedestrian fatalities, and out of which more than 7,500 occurred in urban areas. The objective of this paper is the analysis of existing data issues on pedestrians' safety in urban areas, at national and international level. In particular, the analysis aims to identify the main questions of pedestrian safety data needs, availability and quality and to present pedestrian safety data for the creation an overall picture on the current potential for pedestrians' road safety analysis in urban areas in OECD countries. These issues are discussed in terms of data needs and potential for analyses for policy making. In particular, this paper focuses on macroscopic data, which are typically available in international databases. The distinction between macroscopic and microscopic (or in-depth) data implies not only different scales and objectives of analysis but also significantly different data availability and quality issues. Macroscopic data are useful and comparable data sources that may provide an overall picture of basic trends and figures related to pedestrian safety. However, the need for detailed analysis, allowing to identify specific factors and patterns of pedestrian accidents, can only be addressed through the exploitation of much more detailed information, which may only be available at national level. The questions related to macroscopic pedestrian safety data are analyzed in the following sections. Existing pedestrian safety data are presented and interpreted in terms of key factors of pedestrian safety. In particular, data from the CARE database of the European Commission are initially used, together with related data from other OECD countries, collected by means of a questionnaire. The potential, advantages and limitations for exploiting existing data for decision making are discussed. Finally, particular emphasis is put on data quality issues during the analysis, so as to limit the consequences of incompatible data definitions and collection methods. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting