Spatial Association Between Urban Neighbourhood Characteristics ‎‎and ‎‎‎Child Pedestrian–Motor Vehicle Collision‎s

This study examined the relationship between environmental and socioeconomic factors and the number of motor vehicle collisions involving young pedestrians. The research encompassed urban neighbourhoods as well as an entire metropolitan area and analyzed data from 7,028 motor vehicle collisions that involved pedestrians aged 18 years or younger, occurring between 2015 and 2019 in the city of Mashhad, Iran. Thirteen indices related to socioeconomic and built environmental factors were quantified at the neighbourhood level. To model the relationship between these explanatory factors and the number of collisions investigated, Poisson and negative binomial models were developed using the geographically weighted regression (GWR) technique. The GWR was used to account for the impact of location on the association between explanatory factors and the count of collisions. The study found that the population of young people, road area ratio, main road intersection ratio, average maximum speed limit, non-motorized travels, sidewalk area ratio, sidewalk disconnections, number of schools, unemployment ratio, illiteracy rate, and open space ratio were significantly associated with child pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions. However, these associations were not uniform across the entire study area. It is possible that unknown factors or an unknown interaction of known factors in different parts of the urban area may have influenced the observed associations.