Methods to Prioritize Pedestrian High-Crash Locations and Statistical Analysis of Their Relationships

This paper presents a summary of various methods that can be used to identify pedestrian high-crash locations (HCLs) and statistical evaluations of the relationship between the ranking methods. The indices and methods used to identify and rank pedestrian HCLs include individual methods such as crash indices based on frequency, weighted severity factor, vehicular traffic volume, and pedestrian age group, as well as composite methods such as the sum-of-the-ranks method and the crash score method. The ranks for individual HCLs obtained by these methods may vary, as they are based on different data. There is thus a need to evaluate the statistical relationships between the results obtained by the various methods. Data for 30 pedestrian HCLs in the Las Vegas, Nevada, metropolitan area were used to illustrate the methods and conduct statistical analyses. The results indicated that the rankings based on the individual methods were strongly correlated to the rankings from the composite methods, as were the rankings between the composite methods. The results also indicated that the rankings based on individual methods were correlated among themselves, although this correlation was not as strong. Furthermore, when only the top few highest-ranked HCLs were considered, their ranks were strongly correlated, regardless of the method chosen. Although any of the methods could be used to identify pedestrian HCLs, use of the simple frequency- or weighted frequency-based methods would be adequate as a first step.