LONGITUDINAL PEDESTRIAN SAFETY TRENDS BY VEHICLE TYPE AND MODEL: A 2015-2022 STUDY OF TEXAS

We observed pickup trucks, SUVs, and passenger cars and their two most popular vehicle models across Texas from 2015 through 2022. For each vehicle type and model, we obtained all reported pedestrian crashes, counts of registered vehicles, and vehicle design characteristics. Results suggest that older vehicles are more likely to seriously injure or kill a pedestrian than newer ones. They also indicate that SUVs were more deadly, after controlling for exposure using the number of registered vehicles, than other vehicle types. Of the models studied, the full-size SUVs proved to be particularly dangerous for pedestrians, being 2.08 times more likely to strike and 2.12 times more likely to seriously/fatally injure pedestrians than other vehicle types. Taller vehicles were more likely to result in more serious pedestrian injuries, and vehicles that saw increases in grille height over the study period were more likely to concurrently experience increases in pedestrian injury severity.