The relationship between urban street networks and the number of transport fatalities at the city level

• We estimate the relationship between urban street indicators and passenger fatalities.
• This relationship is evaluated in various cities on a macro-level scale.
• We use blocks per area and nodes per selected areas to illustrate the street layout.
• These indicators in addition to the length of roads and motorways affect fatalities.
• The results can be used in urban street planning processes.

There are factors that impact traffic safety and the number of accident-related fatalities, such as street users, environment, road design and vehicle characteristics, but there have been limited studies that examine the relationship between street network factors and traffic-related crashes and fatalities at the city level. Therefore, this paper focused on this relationship by introducing urban street network variables, such as blocks per area, nodes per selected areas and length of roads and motorways, as independent variables and the number of fatalities as the dependent variable. This study used Open Street Maps (OSM) and International Association of Public Transport (UITP) data from 20 cities around the world. The number of blocks per area and nodes per selected areas resulted from modifying and analyzing OSM maps in ArcGIS software. The strength of the relationship in this study was found using generalized linear modeling (GLM). The findings of this research indicated that increases in fatalities are correlated with an increasing number of blocks per area, number of nodes per selected areas and length of the motorways.