A decade of child pedestrian safety in England: a Bayesian spatio-temporal analysis
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Shoari, Niloofar
Heydari, Shahram
Blangiardo, Marta
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background
Child pedestrian injury is a public health and health equality challenge worldwide, including in high-income countries. However, child pedestrian safety is less-understood, especially over long time spans. The intent of this study is to understand factors affecting child pedestrian safety in England over the period 2011–2020.
Methods
We conducted an area-level study using a Bayesian space-time interaction model to understand the association between the number of road crashes involving child pedestrians in English Local Authorities and a host of socio-economic, transport-related and built-environment variables. We investigated spatio-temporal trends in child pedestrian safety in England over the study period and identified high-crash local authorities.
Results
We found that child pedestrian crash frequencies increase as child population, unemployment-related claimants, road density, and the number of schools increase. Nevertheless, as the number of licensed vehicles per capita and zonal-level walking/cycling increase, child pedestrian safety increases. Generally, child pedestrian safety has improved in England since 2011. However, the socio-economic inequality gap in child pedestrian safety has not narrowed down. In addition, we found that after adjusting for the effect of covariates, the rate of decline in crashes varies between local authorities. The presence of localised risk factors/mitigation measures contributes to variation in the spatio-temporal patterns of child pedestrian safety.
Conclusions
Overall, southern England has experienced more improvement in child pedestrian safety over the last decade than the northern regions. Our study revealed socio-economic inequality in child pedestrian safety in England. To better inform safety and public health policy, our findings support the importance of a targeted system approach, considering the identification of high-crash areas while keeping track of how child pedestrian safety evolves over time.
Child pedestrian injury is a public health and health equality challenge worldwide, including in high-income countries. However, child pedestrian safety is less-understood, especially over long time spans. The intent of this study is to understand factors affecting child pedestrian safety in England over the period 2011–2020.
Methods
We conducted an area-level study using a Bayesian space-time interaction model to understand the association between the number of road crashes involving child pedestrians in English Local Authorities and a host of socio-economic, transport-related and built-environment variables. We investigated spatio-temporal trends in child pedestrian safety in England over the study period and identified high-crash local authorities.
Results
We found that child pedestrian crash frequencies increase as child population, unemployment-related claimants, road density, and the number of schools increase. Nevertheless, as the number of licensed vehicles per capita and zonal-level walking/cycling increase, child pedestrian safety increases. Generally, child pedestrian safety has improved in England since 2011. However, the socio-economic inequality gap in child pedestrian safety has not narrowed down. In addition, we found that after adjusting for the effect of covariates, the rate of decline in crashes varies between local authorities. The presence of localised risk factors/mitigation measures contributes to variation in the spatio-temporal patterns of child pedestrian safety.
Conclusions
Overall, southern England has experienced more improvement in child pedestrian safety over the last decade than the northern regions. Our study revealed socio-economic inequality in child pedestrian safety in England. To better inform safety and public health policy, our findings support the importance of a targeted system approach, considering the identification of high-crash areas while keeping track of how child pedestrian safety evolves over time.
Date Issued
2023-02-01
Date Acceptance
2023-01-23
Citation
BMC Public Health, 2023, 23, pp.1-13
ISSN
1471-2458
Publisher
BioMed Central
Start Page
1
End Page
13
Journal / Book Title
BMC Public Health
Volume
23
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
License URL
Identifier
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-023-15110-2
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
215
Date Publish Online
2023-02-01