Road Safety for All: The Impact of Sociodemographic Inequalities on Road Safety
A special issue of Safety (ISSN 2313-576X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 June 2023) | Viewed by 6768
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The emergence of vehicle automation and new mobility concepts such as micromobility, along with and the extensive flow of data, have paved the way for road safety researchers and practitioners to investigate sophisticated approaches to mitigate crashes and promote safe travel behavior. Today, road safety systems can be both proactive and reactive, using state-of-the art statistical and machine learning methods to predict and explain operations in real time, with “Vision Zero” and “Safety II” being key terms in the research literature. Nevertheless, in the majority of current road safety studies and practices, countries and areas with low- and middle-income citizens, as well as marginalized populations such as racial or cultural minorities and people with mental or cognitive impairment, are not considered.
In the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing global energy crisis have disrupted the normal operation of transportation systems and have significantly affected not only road safety and travel behavior but also the well-being of citizens worldwide. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, policies with differing strictness were applied in different parts of the world, leading to different safety outcomes, such as a reduction in fatalities, but also a deterioration in the mental health conditions of people whose movement was restricted, who often showed increased levels of anxiety and depression. Although the interrelationship between socioeconomic or energy disruptions and driving or travel behavior has been established, the effects of sociodemographic or mental inequalities on road safety remain uncertain and lead to another imbalance in the studied population samples.
Building on the abovementioned aspects, this Special Issue aims to explore the effect of sociodemographic inequalities on road safety. Researchers are invited to submit manuscripts regarding all aspects of road safety (e.g., crash prediction, crash frequency analysis, safety assessment, and driving behavior) using traditional or machine learning approaches, with special focus on study areas that include marginalized and low-income populations, as well as the effect of mental health (e.g., anxiety, depression, road rage, and cognitive impairment) on road safety and driving behavior. Papers regarding key challenges and policy recommendations for diminishing the aforementioned inequalities in road safety studies are especially welcome.
Dr. Christos Katrakazas
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- road safety
- social and economic inequalities
- mental health effects
- marginalised populations
- driving/travel behavior
- policy recommendations
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