Examining the nonlinear effects of traffic and built environment factors on the traffic safety of cyclist from different age groups

In the Netherlands and all over the world, traffic safety problem has been growing particularly for cyclists over the last decades with more people shifting to cycling as a healthy and sustainable mode of transport. Literature shows that age is an important factor in crash involvement and consequences; however, few studies identify the risk factors for cyclists from across different age groups. Therefore, this study aims to identify and understand the effects of traffic, infrastructure, and land use factors on vehicle-to-bike injury and fatal crashes involving cyclists from different age groups. For this purpose, we adopted an approach consisting of resampling and machine learning (XGBoost-Tweedie) techniques to analyse police-reported crashes between the years 2015 and 2019 in the Netherlands. The analysis shows that effects of external variables on crashes widely vary among different age groups and the analysis of total crash rates may not disclose the nature of crashes of cyclist from different age groups. The analysis also shed light on the nonlinear effects of traffic and built environment factors on cyclist crashes, which are usually disregarded in the traffic safety literature. The proposed approach and findings provide a profound understanding of the nature of cyclist crashes and the complex relationships between factors, which can contribute to developing effective crash prevention strategies tailored to different age groups.