Project Overview
The Youth Transportation Safety Program (YTS) Pedestrian and Bicyclist Dashboard was produced by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and sponsored by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) in 2024. The YTS Pedestrian and Cyclist Dashboard is a dynamic visualization of motor vehicle crash data involving pedestrians or cyclists that occurred on public Texas roadways and resulted in a death, injury, or $1,000 or more in property damages from 2014 to 2023. It’s purpose is to improve support for high-risk schools and the youth that travel to them.
Key Takeaways:
- Users can summarize years of crash data reviewing for trends, high-risk locations, and crash factors..
- When using the zip code equity index in Texas, teen pedestrian crashes are higher in less affluent neighborhoods than in more affluent.
- Targeting outreach for high-risk youth takes embedding the concept of serving people at risk and raising awareness across networks so others can help fill gaps in education and outreach.
Our Approach:
Over the past three years, the Youth Transportation Safety Program has set out to identify high-risk, underserved communities by first understanding pedestrian and bicycle crash factors, developing criteria around what constitutes high-risk and underserved, and then designing a dashboard that provides a way to identify exactly what schools need to be targeted.
TTI developed the data dashboard and visualization tool using TxDOT’s Crash Record Information System (CRIS), Teens in the Driver Seat® (TDS) high school data, Texas Education Agency school data, and the TTI-developed Equity Index. By doing this users may improve support for underserved schools (haven’t participated in TDS in the last 5 years), and who have a high rate of youth crashes and a low equity index, also known as high-risk schools.
The primary audience who might find this dashboard useful is TxDOT, with expert knowledge in CRIS data and the strategic use of state funds, they can spot gaps in service and high-risk regions or high schools. The secondary audience is other youth traffic safety education groups with beginner-level knowledge of crash data that can be easily interpreted through visualization and seeks to serve high-risk, underserved populations.
Findings:
The dashboard is a unique way for Texas agencies to identify then target high-risk, underserved high schools in the state. TTI’s Teens in the Driver Seat program is only one countermeasure to preventing teen-involved pedestrian and bicycle crashes and is only in around 150 high schools each year. To be more strategic with our resources, identification of high-risk, underserved schools was the first step.
Of the 164 pedestrian crashes that occurred in 2023 and were assigned to high schools within a one-mile radius, only 19 were attributed to a TDS-enrolled school. This tells us that there are many non-TDS schools experiencing pedestrian crashes, and we may want to target those schools better to prevent those crashes from happening again.
Additionally, of the 401 high schools with one or more pedestrian crashes within a one-mile radius of their school in the last five years, 272 would be considered underserved schools. This means those 272 schools have never had the Teens in the Driver Seat program at their campus, identifying a gap in service and opportunity for targeted injury prevention efforts.
Throughout this process, there have been a few lessons learned to taking an equitable approach to injury prevention and service delivery.
- Define your organization’s goals for targeting high-risk communities and set criteria for identifying what those communities are.
- Embed the concept of serving people at high risk of being in a crash early and often, as it may take some time for people to buy into the problem or there may be other competing interests.
- Research to determine who your high-risk population is, such as their demographics or the locations in which they reside or can be engaged.
- Raise awareness of high-risk communities across your network, so others can help fill gaps in education and outreach.
Deliverables:
For more information on this project, please contact:
Gabriella Koldozy, MPA, CDP
TTI Associate Transportation Researcher
Youth Transportation Safety Program
[email protected]
Project Title: Youth Pedestrian and Bicycle Crash Data Dashboard for Targeted Outreach
Project Start and End Dates: October 1, 2023 – September 30, 2024
Author List: Gabriella Kolodzy and Marcie Perez
Sponsor/Funding Source: Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT)