931915
research-article2020
JPEXXX10.1177/0739456X20931915Journal of Planning Education and ResearchDumbaugh et al.
Planning Research
Toward Safe Systems: Traffic
Safety, Cognition, and the Built
Environment
Eric Dumbaugh1 , Dibakar Saha1, and Louis Merlin1
Abstract
Conventional transportation practice attributes traffic crashes to human error, leading to the prevailing assumption that
crash prevention is principally an outcome of driver education and law enforcement programs. But what if planning and urban
design decisions induce human errors? In this study, we examine the literature in organizational systems safety, cognitive
psychology, and behavioral economics to detail how cognitive interpretations of the built environment may produce the
errors that result in traffic crashes. We proceed to examine crash incidence in Charlotte-Mecklenberg County in light of this
cognitive framework and discuss its implications for research and practice.
Keywords
design, transportation, urban form
The basic principle of Safe Systems starts with the insight that
human error should no longer be seen as the primary cause of
crashes. Instead, road crashes are seen as a consequence of
latent failures created by decisions and actions within the
broader organizational, social or political system which
establishes the context in which road users act.
—International Transport Forum (ITF) 2016, 27.
Introduction
Traffic safety, and particularly a concern for the safety of
pedestrians and cyclists, has long been a concern of the plan-
ning profession. Nonetheless, the prevailing model for
addressing traffic safety is one that provides little opportu-
nity for planners to meaningfully influence safety outcomes
(see Figure 1). Under this model, crashes are regarded prin-
cipally as a product of human failures (National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA] 2015), leading to
the view that crash prevention is best achieved through pro-
grams aimed at altering driver behavior, such as driver edu-
cation programs and advertising campaigns that seek to
discourage people from driving under the influence of drugs
or alcohol or texting while driving, among others. Design is
viewed not as a means of crash prevention, but instead as a
mechanism for reducing the consequences of these otherwise
unpreventable human errors. Typically, this entails the appli-
cation of engineering countermeasures intended to “forgive”
these errors, such as wide travel lanes and roadside clear
zones (Dumbaugh 2005).
While education, enforcement, and vehicle safety systems
have been successful in reducing traffic-related death and
Journal of Planning Education and Research
1­–13
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0739456X20931915
https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X20931915
journals.sagepub.com/home/jpe
injury through the 1990s, the safety improvements attribut-
able to these strategies appears to have tapered off, and traf-
fic fatalities have begun to increase in the United States over
the last decade, particularly for pedestrians (NHTSA 2017).
Much of the problem is the design of our transportation
infrastructure; after controlling for safety improvements
attributable to increased seat belt use, reductions in drunk
driving, and improvements to emergency services, the
changes to our transportation infrastructure have been found
not to reduce fatal crashes, but to instead increase them
(Noland 2003; Noland and Oh 2004). Over the last three
decades, seat belt usage rates have climbed to 90 percent,
while fatalities attributable to drunk driving have been
reduced by nearly 50 percent (NHTSA 2019). Collectively,
this suggests that new approaches are needed if we are to
make meaningful advancements to traffic safety.
Safe Systems (also referred to as “Sustainable Safety” in
the Netherlands), has emerged as a response to these trends.
As an approach to road safety, Safe Systems is centered on
the kinetic energy model, based on the recognition that
crash-related trauma is a direct function of the human body’s
ability to withstand the forces that occur during a crash
impact (Corben et al. 2010). This has led to a four-pronged
Initial submission, March 2019; revised submissions, June and September
2019; final acceptance, April 2020
1
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA
Corresponding Author:
Eric Dumbaugh, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, SO 284C,
Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA.
Email: edumbaug@fau.edu
2 Journal of Planning Education and Research 00(0)
Figure 1.  The current model for addressing traffic safety.
Figure 2.  A safe systems approach to traffic safety (International
Transport Forum 2016).
approach to addressing safety: providing safe roads, ensur-
ing safe speeds, designing safe vehicles, and encouraging
safe behavior (see Figure 2).
Of these four areas, two are of particular relevance to
planners and urban designers: safe speeds and safe roads.
Safe speeds is a relevantly straightforward concept that is
already familiar to most planners and designers. Based on
the understanding that crash severity increases signifi-
cantly and exponentially as a function of impact speeds
(Rosen and Sander 2009; Zegeer et al. 2002), Safe Systems
asserts that “speed policy should seek to minimise the
kinetic energy released in a road traffic collision”
(International Transport Forum [ITF] 2016). Less clear,
but of no less importance, is the call for the creation of
safer roads. The ITF states that “road safety needs to be a
central focus when wider urban planning decisions are
being made” (ITF 2016, 136). Absent from the literature,
however, is any substantive discussion of what such a
focus should entail, or how it is to be achieved. As stated
by Salmon, McClure, and Stanton (2012), “although many
have made the call for a systems approach, it has not
penetrated road safety research, practice, or policy in any
meaningful manner” (p. 1837).
The purpose of this article is to begin to define such an
approach, particularly as it relates to the planning and design
professions. Addressing traffic safety in urban environments
requires a better understanding of the manner in which the
built environment influences human cognition, and how cog-
nition, in turn, influences the behaviors that result in traffic-
related crashes, deaths, and injuries. To do so, we examine
the literature in the domains of organizational systems safety,
cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics to detail
how the cognitive interpretation of the built environment
may influence the behaviors that lead to crash incidence. We
then proceed to examine crash incidence in Charlotte-
Mecklenberg County in light of the cognitive framework we
have proposed and conclude by discussing its applications
for future research and practice.
Error, Crash Causation, and the Built
Environment
The conventional wisdom, regularly encountered by plan-
ners and urban designers that engage in urban street design,
holds that “90% or more all crashes are attributable to driver
error” (NHTSA 2015). This factoid underpins the largely
unsupported assertion1 that automated vehicles will enhance
safety, which is based on the rationale that if we eliminate the
driver, we will therefore eliminate the errors they produce,
which would in turn lead to elimination of 90 percent of all
crashes.
Is it reasonable to assert that drivers are to blame for the
90 percent of all crashes that occur? This idea first emerged
in 1979 from a study published by Treat et al. and remains
the primary means for understanding crash causation through
the present (NHTSA 2015). To arrive at this assertion, Treat
and his coauthors examined data contained in police accident
reports for Monroe County, Indiana, identifying the behav-
iors in which the participants were reported to have engaged
immediately prior to the crash. Their assumption is that, had
these behaviors been altered, the crash would have been
prevented.2 The logical exercise used in this analysis, known
by behavioral economists as the simulation heuristic, entails
the construction of an “if only” proposition (Kahneman and
Tversky 1998; Roese 1997). If only the driver had not
exceeded the speed limit, he or she would not have run off
the road. If only a pedestrian had used protected crosswalk,
he or she would not have been struck by the oncoming vehi-
cle. Following this line of reasoning, which certainly has a
high degree of face validity, if we can encourage people to
reverse their pre-crash behaviors, we can reverse the crash
outcomes as well.
From a systems-safety perspective, however, such expla-
nations are regarded as naïve (Leveson 2004). Contemporary
city streets, like other industrial systems, entail human inter-
actions with complex environments. While it is true that
Dumbaugh et al. 3
people may err in the use of these systems, these errors can-
not be solely attributed to human fallibility; many of these
errors may instead be the result of a misalignment between
the system’s design and manner in which it is likely to be
used (Reason 1997). For planners and urban designers, this
suggests that the need for a greater understanding of the
manner in which people interpret and make behavioral deci-
sions regarding their use of urban streets.
Understanding Driver Behavior: Scripts and
Schema
Historically, safety researchers have applied utility models to
understand driving behavior, based on the idea that drivers
seek to maximize their speed or mobility in exchange for
accepting some level of situated risk (Blomquist 1986; Fuller
2011; Noland 2013; Peltzman 1975; Wilde 1982b). Yet driv-
ing behavior is often not the result of intentional decisions to
maximize utility, but instead a mundane activity typically
accomplished by intuitive and largely preconscious pro-
cesses (Perez et al. 2015). Individuals gleam information
from their environment by relating it into existing cognitive
categories, which allow them to quickly and efficiently pro-
cess large amounts of sensory information and instanta-
neously apply it to the situation at hand (Rosch 1978; Van
Elslande and Faucher-Alberton 1997).
With respect to urban streets, this means that drivers infer
an overall sense of a roadway based on their existing knowl-
edge of, and experience with, similar “types” of roadways.
A simulation study has found that driver’s infer a roadway’s
“type” through the presence of a limited number of environ-
mental cues, such as lane widths or the massing of roadside
development (Theeuwes 2012). This cognitive categoriza-
tion in turn establishes expectations regarding the features
that are likely to be present in the environment, referred to
by psychologists as schema. Schema are relevant because
humans are incapable of mentally processing the wide array
of information contained in their environment (Gigerenzer
and Brighton 2009; Kahneman 2011), leading them to cog-
nitively simplify the interpretive task by intuiting the ele-
ments that are likely to be present and useful, and then
filtering out most other (presumably irrelevant) sensory
information3 (Theeuwes 2002, 2012). In the language of
behavioral economics, the characteristics of the built envi-
ronment have the ability to “prime” expectations about the
possible presence of specific crash hazards and thus prepare
drivers to respond to their emergence (Höger and
Seidenstücker 2007; Tversky and Kahneman 1982).
These expectations in turn lead to the production of
behavioral scripts, which entail the organization of schema
into behavioral routines. The production of scripts is why
basic operational decisions, such as speed selection and lane
placement, typically require little cognitive effort. They are
automated behavioral routines that an individual intuits is
appropriate for their environment, given their prior knowl-
edge and experience (Abelson 1981; Schank and Abelson
1977).
The Role of Schema and Scripts in Common
Crash Phenomenon
Schema and scripts explain phenomena that are regularly
observed in the incidence of crashes involving pedestrians
and cyclists. The first is popularly known as the “safety in
numbers” hypothesis, which finds that as pedestrians and
cyclists become more prevalent in a particular environment,
their risk of being involved in a traffic crash declines
(Jacobsen 2002; Leden 2002; Robinson 2005). From the per-
spective of human cognition, the increased presence of
pedestrians and cyclists in a particular environment would be
expected to lead to the production of refined schema and
scripts that prepare motorists to anticipate their presence,
thus making them better able to respond to a conflicting
pedestrian or bicyclist movement.
Yet environments can also produce the opposite effect;
namely, that their design fails to trigger schema regarding
hazards that are, in fact, present, thereby rendering them
cognitively “invisible.” This phenomenon, well documented
in the psychology literature, is known as “inattentional
blindness,” which is the failure to observe something that is,
in fact, present and readily visible (Chabris and Simons
2011; Mack and Rock 1998). In the case of traffic safety,
inattentional blindness results in a crash type categorized
as “looked-but-failed-to-see,” a crash type that typically
involves pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists, and
which has been estimated to account for 10 percent of all
fatal crashes (Brown 2002). In the case of inattentional
blindness, the roadway’s environment fails to prime schema
relating to the presence of pedestrians or bicyclists, result-
ing in the driver’s failure to “see” these users prior to crash-
ing into them, even when they were located in the driver’s
immediate cone of vision prior to the collision.
That consistent and predictable patterns in the cognitive
interpretation of the built environment lead to correspond-
ingly predictable increases or reductions in crash incidence
suggests we can no longer attribute crash-producing errors
purely, or even largely, to individualized patterns of human
error.
Sources of Error: Active Failures and Latent
Conditions
In the domain of organizational systems safety, human error
is categorized as belonging to one of two types: active fail-
ures and latent conditions. Active failures are the type of
error that serves as the focus of conventional safety practice
and naturally occurs at the interface between humans and
complex systems. Active failures are the result of a person
4 Journal of Planning Education and Research 00(0)
incorrectly executing a “correct” intended action (known as
a slip), or failing to undertake a “correct” intended action
(called a lapse) and are the result of individual characteris-
tics, such as distraction, fatigue, or impairment, rather than
the result of design deficiencies. As such, they should not be
concentrated at specific geographic locations, but instead
distributed across the system as a function of trip generation
and traffic volumes.
Yet organizational systems safety also recognizes a sec-
ond source of error, one which is of far greater relevance to
planners and urban designers. These are the errors that
emerge out of latent conditions embedded into the design of
the built environment, conditions that induce behaviors that
increase one’s potential exposure to a crash event. As
described by Reason (1997), latent conditions can be
regarded as resident pathogens designed into complex sys-
tems, which lie dormant until activated by predictable com-
binations of local circumstances.
The errors produced by latent conditions—henceforth
referred to as latent errors—are not the product of the ordi-
nary slips and lapses that one can expect to occur across a
given population. Instead, latent conditions are transformed
into errors through design-induced mistakes,4 which occur
when road users execute a behavioral routine (i.e., apply a set
of schema and scripts) that they intuit is appropriate for their
environment, but which instead places them at increased
risk. Unlike active failure, mistakes are directly and intrinsi-
cally associated with the design of the built environment and
occur when the built environment fails to prime appropriate
scripts and schema, as evidenced by the phenomenon of inat-
tentional blindness. The presence of environmentally induced
mistakes is already evident in the findings of research con-
ducted in the domains of urban planning and design, which
has consistently found that crashes are not evenly distrib-
uted, but are instead geographically clustered in specific
environments, most notably along arterials and, especially,
along arterials with adjacent commercial uses (Dumbaugh
and Rae 2009; Hadayeghi, Shalaby, and Persaud 2003;
Levine, Kim, and Nitz 1995a, 1995b; Lovegrove and Sayed
2006; Yu and Xu 2018). These environments result in the
production of errors, and thus the incidence of crashes, that
greatly exceed that which would be expected from slips and
lapses alone.
Rule-Based Mistakes and Knowledge-Based
Mistakes
Mistakes can be further categorized as belonging to one of
two primary types. The first are rule-based mistakes, which
occur when a road user applies an incorrect set of schema and
scripts in their specific environment, resulting in behaviors
that increase a person’s crash exposure. Rule-based mistakes
are readily evidenced when drivers adopt operating speeds in
excess of a roadway’s posted speed limit. While it is tempting
to simply attribute this to reckless behavior, research in the
domain of traffic psychology indicates that speed selection
is influenced, in large part, by the design of the built environ-
ment. In a fascinating study by Recarte and Nunes (2002),
drivers proved incapable of traveling at reduced speeds when
their attention was directed to tasks other than monitoring the
speedometer for compliance. When engaged in cognitive
tasks requiring mental recall, drivers naturally increased their
operating speed, a finding that suggests a reversion to intui-
tive operating scripts. Stated another way, when drivers are
not performing the unnatural task of directing the entirety of
their attention to monitoring the speedometer, they revert to
the application of the behavioral scripts that they intuit are
appropriate for their environment.
Similarly, the design of the built environment has been
observed to reduce operating speeds beyond that which
would be expected to be produced by street geometry alone.
Features such as sidewalks, on-street-parking, street-oriented
buildings, and roadside trees on urban streets have all been
observed to produce statistically significant reductions in
operating speeds (Dumbaugh 2006; Gargoum, El-Basyouny,
and Kim 2016; Harvey and Aultman-Hall 2015; Ivan,
Garrick, and Hanson 2009; Smith and Appleyard 1981). In
these cases, the design and configuration of the built envi-
ronment result in the adoption of lower speed scripts, which,
in the majority of these studies, are associated with reduc-
tions in crash incidence
The second type of mistake is a knowledge-based mis-
take, which occurs when a driver or other road user encoun-
ters an unfamiliar situation, and where the correct behavior
cannot be easily intuited from prior experience. In this situa-
tion, the individual is forced to make a conscious decision
about how to proceed in the absence of adequate informa-
tion. As detailed by Daniel Kahneman (2011), conscious
decisions in complex situations are cognitively intensive and
require deliberation. Mistakes can be expected to occur when
the time needed to make a correct operating decision exceeds
the time available to do so.
Knowledge-based mistakes can be observed at complex
intersections, most notably at interchanges between free-
ways and arterials, where drivers are unsure about how to
appropriately navigate an intersection. These crashes, known
as “wrong-way driving,” are the result of an individual’s lack
of knowledge about how to safely maneuver along complex
interchanges and have been found to produce roughly 360
deaths in the United States each year (Pour-Rouholamin
et al. 2014). To date, there has been little examination of the
role of knowledge-based mistakes on crash incidence, though
they are likely responsible for a significant share of crashes
that occur at complex, multi-phase intersections, particularly
those that employ permitted left-turning maneuvers or which
apply lead-lag signal phasing.
Examining Active Failure and Latent
Errors in Urban Environments
To date, there has been little, if any, examination into the
relative role that active failures and latent errors may play on
Dumbaugh et al. 5
Figure 3.  Charlotte-Mecklenburg county.
urban crash incidence. We conducted a literature search on
the Transportation Research Information Database (TRID),
provided by the National Academies of Science, using the
terms “safe systems,” “active failure,” “latent conditions,”
“latent error,” “latent failure,” and “mistakes,” among others,
and were unable to find a single empirical study relating
these concepts to traffic safety; in the cases where these
search terms were present, they pertained almost exclusively
to aviation and marine transport, or the movement of hazard-
ous materials, areas that have long adopted an organizational
systems-based approach to addressing safety.
As such, we sought to examine whether this theoretical
framework might be similarly useful for understanding crash
incidence on urban streets. To do so, we conducted a geo-
spatial analysis of crash frequency and severity at the block
group level for Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, North
Carolina (see Figure 3). Because there are no readily avail-
able data sources on behavioral adaptations to different envi-
ronmental conditions, we sought to construct operational
definitions from available data sources that would allow us
to examine whether the distinction between active failures
and latent errors may be a useful theoretical frame for under-
standing urban crash frequency and severity. While this is an
examination of a single metropolitan area, it is nevertheless
instructive for examining the theoretical relevance of these
concepts.
Operationalizing Active Failure
Active failures are the routine slips and lapses that can be
expected to occur across a population as a result of ordinary
human fallibility and can be understood as a product of the
number of people in an area and the amount of travel that
they do. To account for the influence of active failure, we
used two variables: million vehicle miles traveled (MVMT)
and block group population, which is a proxy for trip
generation.
•• MVMT: MVMT was calculated by obtaining average
annual daily traffic volumes (AADT) from the North
Carolina State Department of Transportation. AADT
is reported for point locations. To convert AADT to
VMT, we assigned AADT to the street segments con-
tained in the block groups and then multiplied AADT
by the segment length. At locations with more than
one AADT count (i.e., two point locations), we
assigned the street segment to the closest available
count, splitting street segments at the midpoint where
necessary. This process gave us daily VMT for the
street segments. These were summed to get daily
VMT for each block group. To convert this to MVMT
for the study period, we multiplied the daily VMT by
365 (days) and 3 (years) and then divided by one mil-
lion. Note that the values pertain to the total VMT for
both directions of traffic on each street segment.
•• Population: Information on population at the block
group level was acquired from the U.S. Census. More
people would be expected to generate more travel,
regardless of mode, and thus create more crash-pro-
ducing slips and lapses.
Operationalizing Latent Error
Latent errors occur when an environment fails to cogni-
tively prime schema and scripts that prepare road users to
respond to potential traffic hazards. While conventional
crash data do not provide us with information on cogni-
tion, we can nonetheless infer the presence of misapplied
scripts and schema as a product of the crashes that occur in
relation to specific environmental features, over and
beyond those crashes already accounted by measures of
active failure.
For the purposes of this analysis, we defined latent con-
ditions as those environmental features that create conflict-
ing travel movements between multiple road users. If
crashes are principally a function of active failure, as is cur-
rently presumed in the United States (American Association
of State Highway and Transportation Officials [AASHTO]
2010, 2011), these environmental features, which include
intersections, commercial parcels, and bus stops, should
have little, if any, influence on crash incidence. Nonetheless,
if road users are applying an incorrect set of schema and
scripts, then these elements would be expected to result
in a measurable increase in traffic-related crashes, inju-
ries, and deaths. We operationalized these variables as
follows:
6 Journal of Planning Education and Research 00(0)
•• Four-or-more-leg intersections: Four-or-more leg
intersections are locations where opposing streams of
traffic cross, thus creating locations where conflicts
between opposing streams of traffic, and thus traffic
crashes, are more likely to occur (Ben-Joseph 1995;
Dumbaugh and Rae 2009; Ladrón de Guevara,
Washington, and Oh 2004; Lovegrove and Sayed
2006; Marks 1957). To calculate this measure, we
used street network data provided by Mecklenberg
County and identified every intersection point loca-
tion with four-or-more legs. These were then summed
to the block group level.
•• Commercial parcels: Commercial parcels likewise
create traffic conflicts through their use of driveways
for street network access, which function as de facto
intersections. Using parcel-level data provided by the
Mecklenberg County tax assessor’s office, this vari-
able is the sum of the number of unique commercial
parcels contained in each block group.
•• Bus stops: Bus stops can create traffic conflicts by
attracting and distributing pedestrians at points along
the street network, creating concentrations of activity
that may lead to conflicts between vehicles and pedes-
trians. They may further create traffic conflicts at loca-
tions where the bus stops in the outside travel lane (i.e.,
online locations), which may in turn encourage drivers
to attempt to maneuver around the stopped bus, result-
ing in sideswipe and rear-end collisions with adjacent
vehicles (Amoh-Gyimah, Saberi, and Sarvi 2017; Chin
and Quddus 2003; Rhee et al. 2016). Our bus stop vari-
able is the sum of the number of individual bus stops
located within each block group.
Moderating Latent Conditions: Safe Systems
Elements
If the built environment can establish latent conditions that
induce mistakes, it is equally plausible that the design of the
built environment can reduce their occurrence. Safe Systems
and Vision Zero proponents have called for reducing vehicle
speeds on urban surface streets to thirty-five miles per hour
(MPH) or less (Vision Zero Network 2018), as well as
reducing the number of through-lanes along urban streets to
four-or-fewer (National Association of City Transportation
Officials [NACTO] 2013, 2016). Neither assertion is backed
by direct empirical evidence of their effects on crash fre-
quency and severity, but instead on the rationale that more
constrained environments encourage drivers to exercise
additional care. Restated in terms of the cognitive framework
described above, these elements encourage the adoption of
environmentally appropriate scripts and schema. If this is
true, then one would expect these elements to lead to observ-
able reductions in not only the incidence of injurious and
fatal crashes (which are a function of impact speed) but also
total crash incidence. To determine the validity of these
assertions, we included two additional variables in the model:
•• Percentage of streets with four-or-fewer through
lanes: This variable is the mileage of non-freeway
streets with four-or-fewer through lanes, divided by
the total number of non-freeway streets in the block
group.
•• Percentage of streets with speeds less than thirty-five
MPH: This variable is the mileage of non-freeway
streets with posted speeds of thirty-five MPH or less,
divided by the total mileage of non-freeway streets in
the block group.
Dependent Variables: Total and KAB Crashes
To understand the influence of these variables on crash inci-
dence, we used three years of crash data (2012–2015) for this
analysis to account for regression-to-the-mean effects that
may influence our estimates (Hauer 1997; Hauer and Persaud
1983). Because we were interested in the role of the built
environment on the creation of latent conditions, we exam-
ined crashes occurring on surface streets exclusively. Crashes
occurring on interstates and freeways, where access is gov-
erned by on- and off-ramps, and which principally serve
through-moving motorists, are excluded from this analysis.
A total of 50,387 crashes occurred on surface streets in the
study area between 2011 and 2013. This includes 135 fatal
crashes, 254 incapacitating injury crashes, 3,724 non-inca-
pacitating injury crashes, 14,276 possible injury crashes,
29,761 property damage only crashes, and 2,327 non-traffic
injury crashes. These crashes were aggregated into two
dependent variables: total crashes, which are the sum of all
crashes listed above, and “KAB” crashes, which includes
fatal (K), incapacitating injury (A), and non-incapacitating
injury (B) crashes.
To account for the influence of the built environment, we
aggregated census data, street network data, and parcel-level
land use data to the block group level. A major issue with
aggregating data to the block group level is that census geog-
raphies are typically bounded by major roadways, such as
arterials, which do not align perfectly with block group
boundaries. Furthermore, variations in geo-location can result
in crashes, which are point features, not aligning with streets,
which are line features. We addressed this issue using the
methodology detailed in Dumbaugh, Rae, and Wunneburger
(2011), running a 200-ft buffer (roughly the width of a fully
designed principal arterial) around each block group, with the
goal of accounting for errors in geo-location.
Nonetheless, this approach may bias our model results
based on the crash history of a handful of high-crash streets
or intersections. To remedy this problem, we conducted a
random assignment process for assigning border crashes to
block groups using a two-step process. First, an array of
Dumbaugh et al. 7
Table 1.  Summary of Crash Statistics.
Description Total
Number of total crashes 50,387
Number of fatal (K) crashes 135
Number of incapacitating (A) crashes 254
Number of non-incapacitating (B) crashes 3,724
Number of K + A + B crashes 4,113
numbers was generated such that duplicate crashes had iden-
tical numbers. We randomly assigned these crashes to block
groups, retaining only the first observation and deleting all
duplicate counts. Table 1 provides descriptive statistics for
the block groups in this study.
Model Specification
Crashes are discrete, non-negative, and independent events.
Poisson and negative binomial error distributions are typi-
cally adopted for modeling crash count data. However, the
assumption of the Poisson distribution is that the mean equals
the variance. Crash data are oftentimes found to exhibit extra
variation, or overdispersion (i.e., variance mean). Negative
binomial models are better able to account for overdisper-
sion in crash data and are therefore applied here. The coeffi-
cients for negative binomial models report the percent
change in the dependent variable associated with each unit
increase of the independent variables (Hilbe 2007).
Model Results
Tables 2 and 3 present our model results. As expected, popu-
lation and VMT, the variables that serve as a proxy for slips
and lapses, were associated with the increased incidence of
total and KAB crashes, though population did not prove to be
a significant variable at the 0.05 level of confidence.
Nonetheless, their influence on total and KAB crash inci-
dence is not great. Adding a million miles of additional VMT
to a block group would only be expected to produce a 0.39
percent increase in total crashes and 0.48 percent increase in
KAB crashes. To put this in perspective, the average block
group accommodated roughly 48 million miles of VMT dur-
ing the three-year study period. Doubling the typical block
group’s VMT to 96 million miles would have only a slight
effect on the incidence of KAB crashes, which would be
expected to increase from 2.46 to 3.10 over the three-year
study period.
The variables associated with latent conditions have a far
greater influence on crash incidence. Each four-or-more leg
intersection is associated with a 2.6 percent increase in total
crashes, and a 2.2 percent increase in KAB crashes. Each
commercial parcel is associated with a 0.44 percent increase
in total and 0.28 percent increase in KAB crashes, which
is roughly comparable to the safety effects of adding one
M SD Minimum Maximum
90.79 88.97 0 611
0.24 0.53 0 3
0.46 0.80 0 6
6.71 5.91 0 36
7.41 6.53 0 43
million additional vehicle miles traveled in each block group.
Each bus stop is associated with 2.5 percent increase in total
crashes, and 2.0 percent increase in KAB crashes, roughly
the equivalent of adding an additional four million VMT to
these block groups. Stated another way, environmental con-
ditions that create conflicts between different street users, a
proxy for latent conditions, are associated with large and sta-
tistically significant increases in total and KAB crashes.
The two “safe systems” variables included in the model
proved moderate effects. Because the independent variables
were modeled as percentages, the model results can be inter-
preted as elasticities, and the results are elastic. A 1 percent
increase in the percentage of streets with posted speeds of
thirty-five MPH or less is associated with a 1.9 percent
reduction in both total crashes and KAB crashes; a 1 percent
increase in the lane mileage comprising four-or-fewer lanes
is associated with a 3.3 percent reduction in total crashes and
1.8 percent reduction in KAB crashes.
Toward Safe Systems: A Cognition-
Centered Approach to Traffic Safety
At present, crash prevention is based on the presumption
that traffic crashes are a product of innate human fallibility,
fallibility to be addressed principally through driver educa-
tion and law enforcement programs. The recent emergence
of Safe Systems has nonetheless encouraged safety profes-
sionals to move beyond such simplistic perspectives on
crash causation and to begin examining and addressing the
nature of the behaviors that result in traffic crashes (ITF
2016; ITF 2008).
In this study, we have sought to understand the nature of
crash causation on urban streets, paying particular attention
to the cognitive mechanisms that may induce—or prevent—
the behaviors that transform latent conditions into a crash
event. Research in the areas of organizational systems safety,
cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics provide
important insights into the central role of cognition in crash
incidence, though these insights have not, to date, been
meaningfully integrated into safety practice.
Doing so requires the development of a new framework
for understanding crash causation, one which places human
cognition at its center. As illustrated in Figure 4, the built
environment shapes the schema and scripts applied by road
users, which in turn influences their exposure to crash risks
8 Journal of Planning Education and Research 00(0)

Table 2.  Total Crashes.

Total crashes Coefficient SE z p(z) [95 percent confidence interval]

Active failure
 Population 0.00002 0.0000 0.460 .643 [−0.0001, 0.0001]
  VMT (millions) 0.0048 0.0011 4.210 .000 [0.0026, 0.0070]
Latent failure
  # four of more-leg intersections 0.0262 0.0058 4.560 .000 [0.0149, 0.0375]
  # commercial parcels 0.0044 0.0012 3.690 .000 [0.0021, 0.0068]
  # bus stops 0.0246 0.0040 6.210 .000 [0.0169, 0.0324]
System characteristics
  % streets thirty-five MPH or less −0.0187 0.0038 −4.920 .000 [−0.0261, −0.0112]
  % streets with four or fewer lanes −0.0334 0.0072 −4.660 .000 [−0.0475, −0.0194]
Constant 8.3029 0.7780 10.670 .000 [6.7784, 9.8273]
Log likelihood = −2,887
N = 555

Note: VMT = vehicle miles traveled; MPH = miles per hour.

Table 3.  KAB Crashes.

KAB Crashes Coefficient SE z p(z) [95 percent confidence interval]

Active failure
 Population 0.0001 0.0000 1.720 .085 [0.0000, 0.0001]
  VMT (millions) 0.0039 0.0010 4.100 .000 [0.0020, 0.0058]
Latent failure
  # four of more-leg intersections 0.0217 0.0051 4.260 .000 [0.0117, 0.0317]
  # commercial parcels 0.0028 0.0010 2.780 .005 [0.0008, 0.0047]
  # bus stops 0.0197 0.0033 5.960 .000 [0.0132, 0.0262]
System characteristics
  % streets thirty-five MPH or less −0.0194 0.0034 −5.730 .000 [−0.0260, −0.0128]
  % streets with four or fewer lanes −0.0185 0.0061 −3.040 .002 [−0.0304, −0.0066]
Constant 4.6049 0.6492 7.090 .000 [3.3326, 5.8773]
Log likelihood = −1,535
N = 555

Note: VMT = vehicle miles traveled; MPH = miles per hour.

during the course of their travel. Latent conditions emerge
when the design of the built environment induces schema
and scripts that are inappropriate for a specific operating
environment. These entail more than simply the choice of
higher-than-desirable operating speeds; they can prime a
motorist to identify and adequately respond to the presence
of hazards in their environment, or they can render these haz-
ards cognitively invisible.
We understand some basic components of the outcomes
of these cognitive processes, such that dense development
adjacent to the right-of-way leads is associated with lower
operating speeds (Harvey and Aultman-Hall 2015; Smith
and Appleyard 1981; Theeuwes 2012). Yet the further devel-
opment of our understanding of the role of cognition will
require new research methods. Conventional sources of
safety data, such as those used in this study, are useful for
identifying the outcomes of these cognitive processes—that
is, environmentally based variations in crash incidence—but
they are incapable of detailing these processes themselves.
This will require moving beyond the statistical analysis of
large datasets, and to begin examining how design influences
the behaviors and understandings of real-world human
subjects.
Moving forward, we need to develop our understanding
of how the built environment may prime specific scripts and
schema in human drivers, and how those scripts and schema
may, in turn, influence crash frequency and severity. These
may entail psychological studies that task subjects with road
scene interpretation, which can in turn be used to identify the
salient environmental features that govern the adoption of
specific schema and scrips, or the use of driving simulators
to capture human behavioral responses to different design
scenarios.
We believe that latter approach, which permits research-
ers to develop and test specific environmental stimuli,
will provide to be a particularly fruitful approach. In an
Dumbaugh et al. 9
Figure 4.  A cognition-centered approach to crash prevention.
interesting study of driver cognition and behavior, van der
Horst and Kaptein (1998) used a simulator to demonstrate
that differing the marking configurations for lanes, center-
lines, and shoulders influences speed choice, as well as
driver expectations governing the selection of a “safe”
speed. Such an approach, when combined with variations in
the roadway’s developmental context and the simulation of
common urban crash scenarios during the simulation rou-
tine, such as an abrupt vehicle or pedestrian crossing, would
likely yield highly useful results for understanding how cog-
nitive expectancy may establish, or prevent, latent error.
Conventional simulators allow researchers to capture driver
reaction times and braking response following the introduc-
tion of a traffic conflict, while readily available biometric
tools, such as eye-tracking monitors, can be further added to
capture visual fixations in order to identify the specific fea-
tures within the simulation that drivers are using to establish
their behavioral routines.
Implications for Practice
If latent errors are indeed a primary determinant of the inci-
dence of traffic-related death and injury, then planning and
policy decisions regarding the location and configuration of
future development may have a profound long-term impacts
on traffic safety. Development prescription contains regional
development plans, zoning ordinances, and subdivision reg-
ulations which can lead to the creation of environments that
establish specific—and predictable—patterns of road user
behavior. The decision to zone an arterial for commercial or
retail use, for example, is not a safety-neutral proposition.
This future development will require access and egress,
change the user mix of the thoroughfare, and result in patterns
of behavior that may make crash events more—or less—
likely to occur. Figure 5 depicts causal pathway through
which latent error may be embedded into the transportation
system through the planning and design processes.
Similarly, transportation performance measures such as
vehicle delay or level-of-service, which are the primary mea-
sures of transportation system performance (Shaw 2003),
encourage the advancement of transportation projects that
add lanes, increase speeds, of both, often without regard to a
street’s developmental context. Indeed, conventional safety
guidance, such as AASHTO’s (2010) Highway Safety
Manual, does not regard number of lanes, developmental
context, or its road user mix as having any influence on
safety outcomes, ostensibly from the belief that road users
are individual responsible for the commission of these errors,
and would do so regardless of the characteristics of the trans-
portation system. The result is that capacity-expanding proj-
ects are able to advance through planning and design
processes with little substantive regard for their influence on
road user behavior and the resulting safety consequences.
The NACTO (2013) and the Institute of Transportation
Engineers (2010) have sought to remedy the resulting safety
problems at the design level through the development and
promotion of new “context-sensitive” street design guid-
ance. Nonetheless, there would be little need for post hoc
design interventions if safety considerations were embedded
into the earliest phases of the planning and project develop-
ment process. Correspondingly, we believe Figure 5 is as
useful as a prescriptive model for advancing safe systems.
By illustrating the pathway through which the conditions for
latent error are established, it also identifies opportunities for
proactively identifying planning-level decisions than be
expected to led to negative safety consequences, such as the
adoption of land use codes encouraging future developmen-
tal growth in areas with concentrations of commercial uses
and higher speed arterial systems.
Indeed, practitioners seeking to proactively identify how
future development scenarios may affect annual crash inci-
dence can simply insert block group-level forecast values
into the regression equations emerging from the models pre-
sented in Tables 2 and 3:
10 Journal of Planning Education and Research 00(0)
Figure 5.  Planning, design, and the path of latent error.
Total crashes per year = [EXP (8.3 + 0.0002x1
+ 0.0048x 2 + 0.0262x3 + 0.0044x 4
+ 0.0246x5 − 0.0187x 6 − 0.0334x 7 ) / 3]
1 to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
KAB crashes per year = [EXP (4.6 + 0.0001x
+ 0.0039x 2 + 0.0217x3 + 0.0028x 4
5 6 7
+ 0.0197x − 0.0194x − 0.0185x ) / 3]
where x1 = forecast population; x2 = forecast VMT (mil-
lions); x3 = forecast # of intersections; x4 = forecast # of
commercial parcels; x5 = forecast # of bus stops; x6 = fore-
cast % of streets with limits of 35 MPH or less; x7 = forecast
% of streets with four or fewer lanes.
While the resulting predictions will be necessarily inexact
and pertain specifically to Charlotte-Mecklenberg County,
previous research suggests that the risk factors observed for
Charlotte-Mecklenberg County are not dissimilar to those
found in other regions throughout the United States. As such,
we believe these models are an enormously useful mecha-
nism for identifying—and thus preventing—the emergence
of future safety problems that may occur as a result of broader
development policies.
We thus conclude on an optimistic note. The planning
profession is currently in the midst of a widespread re-
assessment of its role in advancing traffic safety. In the last
five years, more than thirty cities in the United States have
adopted Vision Zero as a policy goal, which calls for the
complete elimination of traffic-related deaths and injuries
(Vision Zero Network 2018). While the success of Vision
Zero policies remains to be seen, it nonetheless heralds a new
commitment to advancing traffic safety as a central planning
concern. This is an opportune time for the profession to
revisit the mechanisms through which planning decisions
influence traffic safety outcomes and it is our hope that the
results of this study provide a useful means for doing do.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This
research was supported, in part, by a grant from the United States
Department of Transportation through the Collaborative Sciences
Center for Road Safety.
ORCID iDs
Eric Dumbaugh https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5254-9711
Louis Merlin https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9267-5712
Notes
1. Such assertions are refuted by the fact that automated vehicles
(AVs) have been found to be involved in crashes at higher
rates, per mile traveled, than conventionally driven vehicles
(Schoettle and Sivak 2015). As we argue in this article, crash
incidence is a function of the cognitive processes through
which humans interpret and respond to their environments.
AVs, as non-human systems, do not apply these processes.
It nonetheless remains unclear whether advancements in
machine learning will enable AVs to become more effective
than mental heuristics in negotiating the complex social envi-
ronments found on urban streets. All that can be confidently
asserted is that AVs apply new technologies that will change
the operating dynamics of the transportation system, which
may reduce certain types of human error, but which, as part of
a complex system, will introduce new forms of latent condi-
tions, conditions which are present, unknown, and unexam-
ined (Koopman, Kane, and Black 2019). This assertion further
Dumbaugh et al. 11
ignores the almost certain emergence of unanticipated hard-
ware and software problems. One need only to recall the trou-
bled history of Windows Vista, or the crashes resulting from
the flight stabilization software used in the Boeing 737 MAX,
for example of why the safety assertions of AV proponents
should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.
2. The categories that Treat et al. (1979) defined, and which are
still used by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(2015), fall into one of three categories:
• Recognition error, which may include driver inatten-
tion or distraction, as well as inadequate surveillance for
oncoming hazards before entering an intersection of mak-
ing a lane change.
• Decision error, such as driving too fast for conditions or
misjudging gaps in oncoming traffic.
• Performance error, such as poor directional control over
the vehicle prior to a crash, a factor most often attributable
to drowsy driving.
3. This effect is further evidenced by the effect of hallucinogenic
drugs, such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms, which have
been shown to reduce activity in the medial prefrontal cortex
(mPFC), the area responsible for processing sensory informa-
tion and organizing it into specific actions (Carhart-Harris
et al. 2012; Euston, Gruber, and McNaughton 2012). This,
in turn, appears to be responsible for the heightened sensory
experiences associated with the use of hallucinogenic drugs.
4. In interests of brevity, we have simplified this discussion.
Mistakes can be divided into three types. The first is a rule-
based mistake, which we focus on in the body of the article.
The second is a knowledge-based mistake, which occurs when
a road user lack prior knowledge on the correct behavioral
rules to apply in their current situation, which may be observed
at complex interchanges, and which result in phenomenon
such as wrong-way driving up a freeway off-ramp. The third
is one we have defined as an incentivized violation, which
occurs when an individual is aware of the behaviors that are
socially expected, but nevertheless make a conscious decision
to deviate from them under the expectation that the violation of
norms of conduct are permissible. Incentivized violations are
evidenced by jaywalking and illegal turning maneuvers.
References
Abelson, Robert P. 1981. “Psychological Status of the Script
Concept.” American Psychologist 36 (7): 715–29.
American Association of State Highway and Transportation
Officials. 2010. Highway Safety Manual. Washington, DC:
American Association of State Highway and Transportation
Officials.
American Association of State Highway and Transportation
Officials. 2011. A Policy on the Geometric Design of Highways
and Streets. 6th ed. Washington, DC: American Association of
State Highway and Transportation Officials.
Amoh-Gyimah, Richard, Meead Saberi, and Majid Sarvi. 2017.
“The Effect of Variations in Spatial Units on Unobserved
Heterogeneity in Macroscopic Crash Models.” Analytic
Methods in Accident Research 13:28–51.
Ben-Joseph, Eran. 1995. Livability and Safety of Suburban Street
Patterns: A Comparative Study. Working Paper No. 642.
Berkeley: Institute of Urban and Regional Development,
University of California.
Blomquist, Glenn. 1986. “A Utility Maximization Model of Driver
Traffic Safety Behavior.” Accident Analysis and Prevention 18
(5): 371–75.
Brown, D. 2002. “Looked but Did Not See’ Accidents: A Review.”
In Behavioural Research in Road Safety: 11th Seminar, edited
by G. B. Grayson, 116–124. Department for Transport, Local
Government and the Regions.
Carhart-Harris, Robin L., David Erritzoe, Tim Williams, James M.
Stone, Laurence J. Reed, R. Alessandro Colasanti, Robin J.
Tyacke, et al. 2012. “Neural Correlates of the Psychedelic State
as Determined by fMRI Studies with Psilocybin.” Proceedings
of the National Academy of Science 109 (6): 2138–43.
Chabris, Christopher F., and Daniel J. Simons. 2011. The Invisible
Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us. New York: Random
House.
Chin, Hoong Chor., and Mohammed Abdul Quddus. 2003.
“Applying the Random Effect Negative Binomial Model
to Examine Traffic Accident Occurrence at Signalized
Intersections.” Accident Analysis & Prevention 35 (2): 253–59.
Corben, Bruce F., David B. Logan, Lisa Fanciulli, Roger Farley,
and Iain Cameron. 2010. “Strengthening Road Safety Strategy
Development ‘towards Zero’ 2009–2020—Western Australia’s
Experience Scientific Research on Road Safety Management
SWOV Workshop 16 and 17 November 2009.” Safety Science
48:1085–97.
Dumbaugh, Eric. 2005. “Safe Streets, Livable Streets.” Journal of
the American Planning Association 71 (3): 283–98.
Dumbaugh, Eric. 2006. “The Design of Safe Urban Roadsides:
An Empirical Analysis.” Transportation Research Record:
Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1961:74–82.
Dumbaugh, Eric, and Michael King. 2018. “Engineering Livable
Streets: A Thematic Review of Advancement in Urban Street
Design.” Journal of Planning Literature 33:451–65.
Dumbaugh, Eric, and Robert Rae. 2009. “Safe Urban form:
Revisiting the Relationship between Community Design and
Traffic Safety.” Journal of the American Planning Association
75 (3): 309–29.
Dumbaugh, Eric, Robert Rae, and Douglas Wunneburger. 2011.
“Using GIS to Develop a Performance-Based Framework for
Evaluating Urban Design and Crash Incidence.” Urban Design
International 16 (1): 63–71.
Euston, David R., Aaron J Gruber, and Bruce L McNaughton.
2012. “The Role of Medial Prefrontal Cortex in Memory and
Decision Making.” Neuron 76 (6): 1057–70.
Fuller, Ray. 2011. “Driver Control Theory: From Difficulty
Homeostasis to Risk Allostasis.” In Handbook of Driver
Psychology, edited by Bryan Porter, 13–26. New York:
Academic Press.
Gargoum, Suliman A., Karim El-Basyouny, and Amy Kim. 2016.
“Towards Setting Credible Speed Limits: Identifying Factors
That Affect Driver Compliance on Urban Roads.” Accident
Analysis & Prevention 95:138–48.
Gigerenzer, Gerd, and Henry Brighton. 2009. “Homo Heuristicus:
Why Biased Minds Make Better Inferences.” Topics in
Cognitive Science 1:107–143.
12 Journal of Planning Education and Research 00(0)
Hadayeghi, Alireza, Amer Said Shalaby, and Bhagwant N. Persaud.
2003. “Macrolevel Accident Prediction Models for Evaluating
Safety of Urban Transportation Systems.” Transportation
Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research
Board 1840:87–95.
Harvey, Chester, and Lisa Aultman-Hall. 2015. “Urban Streetscape
Design and Crash Severity.” Transportation Research Record:
Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2500:1–8.
Hauer, Ezra. 1997. Observational before-after Studies in Road
Safety: Estimating the Effect of Highway and Traffic
Engineering Measures on Road Safety. Tarrytown: Pergamon.
Hauer, Ezra, and Bhagwant N. Persaud. 1983. “A Common
Bias in before and after Comparisons and Its Elimination.”
Transportation Research Record 905:164–74.
Hilbe, Joseph M. 2007. Negative Binomial Regression. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Höger, Rainer, and Jessica Seidenstücker. 2007. “Driving and the
Activation of Mental Concepts.” Special issue 2007, Advances
in Transportation Studies 91–96.
International Transport Forum [ITF]. 2016. “Zero Road Deaths
and Serious Injuries: Leading a Paradigm Shift to a Safe
System. Paris: Organisation for Economoic Co-operation and
Development [OECD].
International Transport Forum [ITF]. 2008. “Towards Zero:
Ambitious Road Safety Targets and the Safe System
Approach.” Paris: Organisation for Economoic Co-operation
and Development [OECD].
Institute of Transportation Engineers. 2010. Designing Walkable
Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach.
Washington, DC: Institute of Transportation Engineers.
Ivan, John N., Norman W. Garrick, and Gilbert Hanson. 2009.
Designing Roads That Guide Drivers to Choose Safer Speeds.
Rocky Hill: Connecticut Department of Transportation.
Jacobsen, Peter Lyndon. 2002. “Safety in Numbers: More
Walkers and Bicyclists, Safer Walking and Bicycling.” Injury
Prevention 9 (3): 205–209.
Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking Fast and Slow. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. 1998. “The Simulation
Heuristic.” In Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and
Biases, edited by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos
Tversky, 201–208. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Koopman, Philip, Aaron Kane, and Jen Black. 2019. “Credible
Autonomy Safety Argumentation.” Safety-Critical Systems
Symposium, Bristol, England, February. https://edge-case-
research.com/project/credible-autonomy-safety-argumentation/.
Ladrón de Guevara, Simon P. Washington, and Jutaek Oh.
2004. “Forecasting Travel Crashes at the Planning Levels:
Simultaneous Negative Binomial Crash Model Applied in
Tucson, Arizona.” Transportation Research Record: Journal
of the Transportation Research Board 1897:191–99.
Leden, Lars. 2002. “Pedestrian Risk Decrease with Pedestrian Flow.
A Case Study Based on Data from Signalized Intersections in
Hamilton, Ontario.” Accident Analysis and Prevention 34 (4):
457–64.
Leveson, Nancy. 2004. “A New Accident Model for Engineering
Safer Systems.” Safety Science 42:237–70.
Levine, Ned., Karl E. Kim, and Lawrence H. Nitz. 1995a. “Spatial
Analysis of Honolulu Motor Vehicle Crashes: I. Spatial
Analysis.” Accident Analysis & Prevention 27 (5): 663–74.
Levine, Ned., Karl E. Kim, and Lawrence H. Nitz. 1995b.
“Spatial Analysis of Honolulu Motor Vehicle Crashes: II.
Zonal Generators.” Accident Analysis & Prevention 27 (5):
675–85.
Lovegrove, Gordon R., and Tarek Sayed. 2006. “Macro-Level
Collision Prediction Models for Evaluating Neighbourhood
Traffic Safety.” Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering 33 (5):
609–21.
Mack, Arien, and Irvin Rock. 1998. Inattentional Blindness.
Cambridge: MIT Press.
Marks, Harold. 1957. “Subdividing for Traffic Safety.” Traffic
Quarterly 11:308–25.
National Association of City Transportation Officials. 2013. Urban
Street Design Guide. Washington, DC: Island Press.
National Association of City Transportation Officials. 2016. Global
Street Design Guide. Washington, DC: Island Press.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 2015. “Critical
Reasons for Crashes Investigated in the National Motor
Vehicle Crash Causation Survey.” DOT HS 812 115, February.
Washington, DC: US Department of Transportation.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 2017. “Traffic
Safety Facts: Annual Report.” Report # DOT HS 812 580.
Washington, DC: United States Department of Transportation,
September.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 2019. “Seat Belt
Use in the United States—Overall Results.” Report # DOT HS
812 662, January. Washington, DC: United States Department
of Transportation.
Noland, Robert. 2003. “Traffic Fatalities and Injuries: The Effect
of Changes in Infrastructure and Other Trends.” Accident
Analysis & Prevention 35:599–611.
Noland, Robert. 2013. “From Theory to Practice in Road Safety
Policy: Understanding Risk versus Mobility.” Research in
Transportation Economics 43:71–84.
Noland, Robert, and Lyoong Oh. 2004. “The Effect of Infrastructure
and Demographic Change on Traffic-Related Fatalities
and Crashes: A Case Study of Illinois County-Level Data.”
Accident Analysis & Prevention 36:525–32.
Peltzman, Sam. 1975. “The Effects of Automobile Safety
Regulation.” Journal of Political Economy 83:677–725.
Perez, Omri., Roy Mukamel, Ariel Tankus, Jonathan D. Rosenblatt,
Yehezkel Yeshurun, and Itzhak Fried. 2015. “Preconscious
Prediction of a Driver’s Decision Using Intracranial Recordings.”
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 27 (8): 1492–1502.
Pour-Rouholamin, Mahdi, Huaguo Zhou, Jeffrey Shaw, and
Priscilla Tobias. 2014. “Overview of Safety Countermeasures
for Wrong-Way Driving Crashes.” ITE Journal 84 (12): 31–38.
Reason, James. 1997. Managing the Risks of Organizational
Accidents. England: Ashgate.
Recarte, Miguel Angel, and Luis Nunes. 2002. “Mental Load and
Loss of Control over Speed in Real Driving. Towards a Theory
of Attentional Speed Control.” Transportation Research Part
F 5:111–22.
Rhee, Kyoung-Ah, Joon-Ki Kim, Young-ihn Lee, and Gudmundur
F. Ulfarsson. 2016. “Spatial Regression Analysis of Traffic
Crashes in Seoul.” Accident Analysis & Prevention 91:190–99.
Robinson, Dorothy L. 2005. “Safety in Numbers in Australia: More
Walkers and Bicyclists, Safer Walking and Bicycling.” Health
Promotion Journal of Australia 16:47–51.
Roese, N. J. 1997. “Counterfactual Thinking.” Psychological
Bulletin 121 (1): 133–48.
Rosch, Ernst. 1978. “Principles of Categorization.” In Cognition
and Categorization, edited by Ernst Risch and B. B. Lloyd,
27–48. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Dumbaugh et al. 13
Rosen, Erik, and Ulrich Sander. 2009. “Pedestrian Fatality Risk
as a Function of Car Impact Speed.” Accident Analysis &
Prevention 41:536–42.
Salmon, Paul M., Roderick McClure, and Neville Anthony Stanton.
2012. “Road Transport in Drift? Applying Contemporary Systems
Thinking to Road Safety.” Safety Science 50 (9): 1829–38.
Schank, Roger C., and Robert P. Abelson. 1977. Scripts, Plans,
Goals and Understanding: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge
Structures. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Schoettle, Brandon, and Michael Sivak. 2015. “A Preliminary Analysis
of Real-world Crashes Involving Self-driving Vehicles.” Report
# UMTRI-2015-34. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan
Transportation Research Institute.
Shaw, T. 2003. “NCHRP 311: Performance Measures of Opera-
tional Effectiveness for Highway Segments and Systems.”
Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board.
Smith, Daniel T., and Donald Appleyard. 1981. “Improving
the Residential Street Environment, Final Report.” Report
FHWA/RD-81/031. Washington DC: Federal Highway
Administration.
Theeuwes, Jan. 2002. “Sampling Information from the Road
Environment.” In Human Factors for Highway Engineers,
edited by Ray Fuller and Jorge A. Santos, 131–46. New York:
Pergamon.
Theeuwes, Jan. 2012. “Self-Explaining Roads and Traffic
System.” In Designing Safe Road Systems: A Human Factors
Perspective, edited by Jan Theeuwes, Richard van der Horst,
and Maria Kuiken, 11–26. New York: CRC Press.
Treat, John R., Nicholas S. Tumbas, Stephen T. McDonald,
David Shinar, Rex D. Hume, R. E. Meyer, R. L. Stansifer,
and N. John Castellan. 1979. “Tri-Level Study of the Causes
of Traffic Accidents.” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of
Transportation.
Tversky, Amos and Daniel Kahneman. 1982. “Causal Schemas in
Judgments under Uncertainty”. In Judgment under Uncertainty:
Heuristics and Biases, edited by Daniel Kahneman, Paul
Slovic and Amos Tversky, 117–128. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511809477.009
van der Horst, Richard, and Nico Kaptein. 1998. “Self-Explaining
Roads.” In Proceedings of the 11th ICTCT Workshop, 15–32.
Budapest, Hungary: International Conference on Traffic
and Transport Psychology [ICTCT]. https://www.ictct.net/
conferences/11-budapest-1998/
Van Elslande, Pierre, and L. Faucher-Alberton. 1997. “When
Expectancies become Certainties: A Potential Adverse Effect
of Experience.” In Traffic and Transport Psychology: Theory
and Application, edited by Talib Rothengatter and Enrique
Carbonell Vaya, 147–59. Amsterdam: Pergamon.
Vision Zero Network. 2018. “Vision Zero Cities.” https://vision
zeronetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/2018_Jan_VZ
-map.pdf.
Wilde, Gerald J. S. 1982. “The Theory of Risk Homeostasis:
Implications for Safety and Health.” Risk Analysis 2:209–25.
Yu, Chia-Yuan, and Minjie Xu. 2018. “Local Variations in the
Impacts of Built Environments on Traffic Safety.” Journal of
Planning Education and Research 38:314–28.
Zegeer, Charles V., Cara Seiderman, Pete Lagerwey, Mike Cynecki,
Michael Ronkin, and R. Schnieder. 2002. “Pedestrian Facilities
Users Guide—Providing Safety and Mobility.” Report No.
FHWA-RD-102-01. Washington, DC: Federal Highway
Administration.
Author Biographies
Eric Dumbaugh is a professor of Urban and Regional Planning at
Florida Atlantic University and Associate Director of the Collabor-
ative Sciences Center for Road Safety.
Dibakar Saha, PhD, is a research associate with the Collaborative
Sciences Center for Road Safety.
Louis Merlin is an assistant professor in the School of Urban and
Regional Planning at Florida Atlantic University.