Pedestrian Fatalities & Injuries in Hit-and-Run Crashes in California, Tennessee & the US: Recent Trends and Risk Factors

Both pedestrian fatalities and overall hit-and-run (HAR) fatalities in the US are at a 40-year high, but no post-COVID trends in fatal HAR pedestrian crashes have been examined despite increased reports of reckless driving, increasing vehicle weight and height, and increases in distracted driving. Further, few studies have examined trends in non-fatal pedestrian HAR crashes. Using 2009-2022 national crash fatality data and data on crashes at all severity levels in California and Tennessee, the research team will examine time trends in all HAR crashes, all pedestrian victim crashes, and how these are related. The team will also examine the risk of serious injury or death among HAR vs. non-HAR crashes to try to elucidate the relationship between HAR and outcome severity. Using regression techniques, the team will then examine risk factors for single vehicle-pedestrian crashes, including comparing risk factors for HAR vs non-HAR crashes and predictors of whether drivers are eventually identified in HAR crashes. Factors to be examined include crash characteristics, victim characteristics, and driver/vehicle characteristics, where available. The team also plans to examine the joint characteristics of driver-pedestrian pairs, such as by age, race or sex, to understand whether this pairing affects the likelihood of fleeing. Finally, the team will examine the effect of several inflection points on HAR crash rates and outcomes for pedestrians, including the effects of the COVID pandemic and, potentially, the effects of specific state-level policy changes around licensing laws, given past research linking HAR to unlicensed drivers.

• Record URL:
  https://www.pedbikesafety.org/projects/24ucb01

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $121280
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552348336

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Stearns, Amy

• Performing Organizations:

  University of California, Berkeley

  Safe Transportation Research and Education Center
  Berkeley, CA  United States  94720
• Principal Investigators:

  Griswold, Julia

• Start Date: 20240601
• Expected Completion Date: 20250531
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crash causes; Crash severity; Fatalities; Hit and run crashes; Pedestrian safety; Pedestrian vehicle crashes; Risk assessment; Trend (Statistics)
• Geographic Terms: California; Tennessee
• Subject Areas: Highways; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01923810
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552348336
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Jul 8 2024 2:54PM