Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety

For Pedestrian Safety Month, CPBS Director Dr. Nick Ferenchak highlights his favorite pedestrian research paper, "An Accident Waiting to Happen: A Spatial Approach to Proactive Pedestrian Planning". "This was the first paper to get me to think proactively about pedestrian (and bicyclist) safety and consider how many safety issues we're missing when we're just looking at reported crashes. I feel like this is still incredibly timely research as we unfortunately still don't do a great job of considering latent pedestrian and bicyclist demand that has been suppressed because of perceived safety. But I'm hopeful that Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress and now Pedestrian Level of Traffic Stress are pushing us in that direction." https://lnkd.in/gAqpbyjt

RESEARCH ALERT! CPBS Associate Director Dr. Chris Cherry's research, "Safety Insights from E-Scooter Rider and Bicyclist Behavior Observations in Two U.S. Cities" is out. Here's what he has to say about it: "In this study we aimed to investigate on-road riding behavior of e-scooter and bicycle riders. Specifically, we were interested in identifying factors that influenced riding in mixed traffic lanes, bike lanes, and on the sidewalk. We collected hundreds of hours of video across 26 sites in Nashville and Portland. We found, as expected, that bike infrastructure, traffic levels, and nighttime were very important predictors of sidewalk riding. This is one of the first studies to investigate on-road riding behavior across thousands of trips using continuous video monitoring." https://lnkd.in/gMDgjdvZ

Our next free webinar "Pedestrian and Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress" will be Wednesday, November 13th at Noon PST / 3pm EST. Register here: https://lnkd.in/eHDhFNQi What are Pedestrian Level of Traffic Stress (PLTS) and Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress (BLTS)? How can PLTS and BLTS be used to improve street safety and comfort and help communities move toward more connected VRU networks? Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety (CPBS) researcher Bob Schneider will first introduce the new PLTS tool, which can be found here: https://lnkd.in/gW8Nuz3C Then CPBS researcher Nick Ferenchak will detail new BLTS intersection criteria. We'll see you there!

TODAY at Noon PDT / 3pm EDT. Free! It's not too late to register.

Continuing our highlight of Pedestrian Safety Month, CPBS Assistant Director Dr. Lisa Losada-Rojas says this about her favorite pedestrian research paper: "My favorite pedestrian paper is a literature review by Stoker et al. 2015 -- Pedestrian Safety and the Built Environment: A Review of the Risk Factors. To start with, I love well-written literature reviews. It is like getting all the information you would need at a point in only 15 pages. Additionally, understanding the built environment is key to recognizing how we can change travel patterns and enhance safety, not only objective safety measures but also safety perceptions. In this paper, they developed a conceptual framework linking the built environment to pedestrian safety and showing how we might need to influence it from a regional, local, and street perspective, considering the different types of pedestrians we encounter on our roads. Even though the paper is not new, it is a great way for a new researcher to get an understanding of the relationship between ped safety and the built environment and potentially motivate them to seek out solutions to the potential problems that arise from this relationship from different angles." https://lnkd.in/g53c9vPV

Pedestrian Safety Month: CPBS researcher Ana Lucaci tells the story of when she was hit by a truck while using a crosswalk in Denver, Colorado. This was not an "accident", it was a failure of the truck driver to pay attention. https://lnkd.in/gYA5YTeY

Our webinar "From Heartbreak to Hope: Advocating for Safer Streets Through Storytelling" has been rescheduled for Monday October 21 at Noon PDT / 3pm EDT. Apologies to anyone who tried to join this past Monday and received an error. We have ironed out the technical issues and look forward to seeing you a week from today! Register at the link below. https://lnkd.in/eHDhFNQi

October is Pedestrian Safety Month, so CPBS asked our researchers which pedestrian safety paper influenced them the most. First is Dr. Su Zhang at UNM: "My favorite paper is “Identifying clusters and risk factors of injuries in pedestrian–vehicle crashes in a GIS environment” by Dai 2012. It provides the foundation for my ideas by utilizing online mapping techniques to analyze pedestrian-vehicle crashes through various clustering and spatial analysis methods." https://lnkd.in/g-nH2Nk5

TOMORROW 10/1 in Albuquerque: ULI presents Streets for All: Pedestrian & Bike Safety. Speakers are Nick Ferenchak, Director of the Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety at UNM and Valerie Hermanson, Public Works Strategic Program Manager for the City of Albuquerque. Join us to learn more about a data-driven and safe systems approach to creating safer streets for everyone. A drink ticket will be provided and food will be available to purchase from The Munchie Truck. Registration is FREE for students. Register at the link below: https://lnkd.in/gjtXWegb

THIS WEEKEND in Berkeley, California -- 50th anniversary of the Berkeley Street Barriers, pioneered by Donald Appleyard, father of CPBS Associate Director Bruce Appleyard.