Objective: Pedestrians account for a third of the 1.2 million traffic fatalities annually worldwide, and men are overrepresented. We examined the factors that contribute to this male-female discrepancy: walking exposure (kilometres walked per person-year), vehicle-pedestrian collision risk (number of collisions per kilometres walked) and vehicle-pedestrian collision case fatality rate (number of deaths per collision).
Design: The decomposition method quantifies the relative contributions (RCs) of individual factors to death rate ratios among groups. The male-female ratio of pedestrian death rates can be expressed as the product of three component ratios: walking exposure, collision risk and case fatality rate. Data sources included the 2008-2009 US Fatality Analysis Reporting System, General Estimates System, National Household Travel Survey and population estimates.
Setting: USA.
Participants: Pedestrians aged 5 years and older.
Main outcome measures: Death rate per person-year, kilometres walked per person-year, collisions per kilometres walked and deaths per collision by sex.
Results: The pedestrian death rate per person-year for men was 2.3 times that for women. This ratio of male to female rates can be expressed as the product of three component ratios: 0.995 for walking exposure, 1.191 for collision risk and 1.976 for case fatality rate. The RCs of these components were 1%, 20% and 79%, respectively.
Conclusions: The majority of the male-female discrepancy in 2008-2009 pedestrian deaths in the US is attributed to a higher fatality per collision rate among male pedestrians.