2016 Articles
National Safe Routes to School program and risk of school-age pedestrian and bicyclist injury
Purpose
Safe Routes to School (SRTS) was a federally funded transportation program for facilitating physically active commuting to and from school in children through improvements of the built environment. There is evidence that SRTS programs increase walking and bicycling in school-age children, but their impact on pedestrian and bicyclist safety has not been adequately examined. We investigate the impact and effects of the SRTS program on school-age pedestrian and bicyclist injuries in a nationwide sample in the United States.
Methods
Data were crash records for school-age children (5–19 years) and adults (30–64 years), in 18 U.S. states for a 16-year period (1995–2010). Multilevel negative binomial models were used to examine the association between SRTS intervention and the risk of pedestrian and bicyclist injury in children aged 5–19 years.
Results
SRTS was associated with an approximately 23% reduction (incidence rate ratio = 0.77, 95% confidence interval = 0.65–0.92) in pedestrian/bicyclist injury risk and a 20% reduction in pedestrian/bicyclist fatality risk (incidence rate ratio = 0.80, 95% confidence interval = 0.68–0.94) in school-age children compared to adults aged 30–64 years.
Conclusions
Implementation of the SRTS program appears to have contributed to improving traffic safety for school-age children in the United States.
Subjects
Files
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nationalSRTS.pdf application/pdf 767 KB Download File
Also Published In
- Title
- Annals of Epidemiology
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annepidem.2016.04.002
More About This Work
- Academic Units
- Epidemiology
- Publisher
- Elsevier Masson
- Published Here
- December 1, 2016