Factors Influencing the Pedestrian Injury Severity of Micromobility Crashes
DOI: 10.3390/su151914348
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study investigates the factors influencing pedestrian injury severity in collisions involving micromobility vehicles, such as bicycles and electric scooters, in urban areas of Spain. Motivated by the rapid growth of micromobility transport and the resulting increase in traffic conflicts, the research addresses a gap in existing literature, which has predominantly focused on crashes between micromobility vehicles and motorized cars. Pedestrians, as the most vulnerable road users, suffer more severe injuries in these collisions, yet they have received less analytical attention. The study aims to identify key variables and their combinations that contribute to injury severity to inform road safety policies. The researchers utilized crash data provided by the Spanish General Directorate of Traffic for the period between 2016 and 2021. From an initial database of 363,381 urban collisions, the authors filtered for incidents involving one micromobility vehicle and one pedestrian, resulting in a final dataset of 3,205 crashes after removing records with inconsistent or incomplete information. Pedestrian injury severity was categorized as the dependent variable into "slightly injured" and "fatal and seriously injured." To address the imbalance in the data, where fatal and serious injuries were underrepresented, the study employed the Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE). A Random Forest classification model was then used to identify significant factors and their interactions, including variables related to the collision context, vehicle type, user demographics, and infrastructure. The findings indicate that pedestrian age is the most critical determinant of injury severity, with individuals aged 70 years or older facing the highest risk. Additionally, collisions occurring at junctions or on weekends were associated with worse outcomes for pedestrians. The analysis highlighted the combined influence of multiple factors, particularly offenses and distractions by both micromobility users and pedestrians. These risky behaviors were found to be more prevalent among younger micromobility users and those riding for leisure or on weekends. The study also noted that while motor vehicle collisions result in the highest percentage of severe injuries, over 7% of micromobility-pedestrian collisions also lead to serious or fatal outcomes, a figure expected to rise with increased micromobility usage. The significance of this research lies in its provision of evidence-based insights for authorities to formulate targeted road safety policies. The authors recommend several measures to mitigate pedestrian injuries, including separating micromobility traffic from pedestrian areas, restricting the use of micromobility vehicles on sidewalks, and incorporating buffer zones in bike lanes near on-street parking. Furthermore, the study advocates for enhanced enforcement measures, road safety campaigns, and training programs for micromobility users. By identifying specific high-risk scenarios and user behaviors, the findings support efforts to reduce the severity of collisions and protect vulnerable road users in evolving urban mobility environments.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| archive | success | openalex | — | — | 5 | 2026-06-25 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-18 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-26; verification: verified.
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- Empirical Findings: crash risk outcomes