Pedestrian-Involved Safety Analysis in Ottawa at Traffic Analysis Zone

In this research, the impact of traffic analysis zone (TAZ) characteristics on the likelihood of pedestrian–vehicle collisions in the City of Ottawa is investigated. Data was gathered from 422 TAZs. Generalized linear modeling (GLM) is used to analyze the data. This model utilized a negative binomial (NB) data distribution. Two methods, the half–half distribution method and the geo-process method, were used to allocate the data from the boundary of adjacent TAZs. According to this study, there is a statistically significant relationship between pedestrian collisions and the overall number of signalized intersections within a TAZ. Additionally, pedestrian collisions were less frequent on roads with speed limits of less than 40 km/h. This indicates that lower speed limits may be more favorable to pedestrian safety. The study also found that for roadways with a speed limit of 70 km/h, pedestrian-involved collisions were inversely related to roadway length. The model also revealed that pedestrian–vehicle collisions can be impacted by the presence of schools. Pedestrian-involved collisions are also more likely to happen on collector roadways than on major collector roadways. In addition, it was found that sociodemographic factors, including employment and the number of households, are linked to the frequency of pedestrian-involved collisions. This research opens the gate for proactively identifying and addressing potential road safety issues, which can assist planners and safety practitioners in reducing the frequency of pedestrian collisions.