Pedestrian and Bike Rider Crashes on National Highway: A Unique Case of Pakistan

The collisions between bike riders and pedestrians are a severe problem in Pakistan as well as other countries of the world. Most of the research efforts in this regard focus on urban areas. However, these crashes could be much severe on national highways, which can happen in countries like Pakistan with lack of obstructions and facilities for crossing. This study aims to find the factors resulting in pedestrian and bike-rider injury and fatality crashes and to suggest effective strategies to mitigate them. The collision data including bike riders and pedestrians is collected from police stations located on the national highway of Pakistan N-80 from Jand to Kohat city of Pakistan. The total number of crashes involving pedestrian or Bike were 151, which were reported from Feb 2021-Feb 2022. This was found to be a high occurrence involving a lot of severe crashes, which is comparable to large urban areas in Pakistan in spite of only including the crashes reported to police. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), logit models and statistical distribution tests were applied for analysis of the data. Results show that 78.14% of the available crashes occurred due to over speeding. Other reasons included overtaking, carelessness and driving in the wrong way. Parametric tests show that crashes involving bike and vehicles, during afternoon and evening times and due to over-speeding are significantly higher than other crashes. The logit model, developed for these crashes, shows that overtaking is the single most significant factor in causing fatal crashes involving pedestrians and bikes.