Analysis of car–pedestrian accidents on highways in the Brazilian Federal District

Fatal car-pedestrian collisions are a very common accident type in the Brazilian Federal District, with 121 occurrences registered in 2012.More than 40% of all pedestrian fatalities occurred at highways.It is known that the most common reason for pedestrians to be on the highways is to cross the roads; however, this is not the safest way to do this.In this regard, this paper aims to map all these kinds of events, in order to investigate the causes and propose solutions to ensure the best and safest conditions for pedestrians.For this purpose, all police data and forensic reports were investigated.Statistical results showed, for example, that car-pedestrian accidents occur more frequently at night, with the vehicle being driven by men aged between 24 and 30 years old.In addition, normally the victims are male, wearing dark color clothes, are 30 to 50 years of age and have consumed alcoholic beverages.Besides this, the geographical locations of all 52 accidents revealed that: (i) more than 90% of the events occurred less than 100m away from a bus stop; and (ii) there was no pedestrian bridge or zebra crossing nearby.Furthermore, no fatal accidents were registered within a radius of 500m from all pedestrian bridges, reinforcing the importance and the efficiency of this apparatus.Thus, from the results of this research, a few suggestions have been proposed to reduce these events.Moreover, it is believed that they can support new public policies related to traffic on highways.