2026/04/02 by Eric Dumbaugh, Jonathan Stiles · 4 voices · 1 citation
Engineering · Medicine · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Traffic and Road Safety #Injury Epidemiology and Prevention #Agriculture and Farm Safety
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/01944363.2026.2635948
Problem, research strategy, and findings Pedestrian and bicyclist deaths now account for nearly one in five traffic fatalities in the United States. They continue to rise even as peer nations have reduced deaths dramatically. We examined 222 miles of arterial highways in Florida to understand the nature of the unique risk confronted by vulnerable road users in the United States. We found that land use decisions—particularly the siting of groceries, pharmacies, gas stations, and fast-food outlets—are strongly associated with the death and injury of vulnerable road users. These household-sustaining uses generate exposure in locations fundamentally incompatible with vulnerable road user safety, activating latent hazards embedded into infrastructure design. We discuss in this article how land use practice differs from that of Europe, and how these differences explain the differences in safety outcomes. We conclude by developing tools for estimating the magnitude of this risk during the project development process and by outlining strategies for enhancing land use and transportation practices to better account for the land use–road safety connection.Takeaway for practice Meaningful progress toward Vision Zero in the United States requires acknowledging that land use decisions—not just street design—are a primary driver of the elevated risk faced by vulnerable road users. Development codes that encourage household-sustaining uses to locate along arterial corridors create predictable and preventable exposure in environments where safety is structurally unattainable without simultaneous changes to the street’s design and function. Addressing this risk demands a shift in planning practice: revising zoning and site-planning standards to explicitly account for safety, redirecting high-risk uses away from arterial corridors, and applying analytic tools that identify and mitigate latent land use hazards during the planning and project development process.