In 2004, 4,641 pedestrians and 725 bicyclists were killed, accounting for 13 percent of all traffic fatalities in the United States. An additional 68,000 pedestrians and 41,000 bicyclists were reported to be injured as a result of collisions with motor vehicles. The Pedestrian & Bicycle Crash Analysis Tool (PBCAT) is a software product intended to assist state and local pedestrian and bicycle coordinators, planners, and engineers in addressing pedestrian and bicyclist crash problems.

PBCAT accomplishes this goal through the development and analysis of a database containing details associated with crashes between motor vehicles and pedestrians or bicyclists. One of these details is the crash type, which describes the pre-crash actions of the parties involved. With the database developed, the software can then be used to produce reports and select countermeasures to address the problems identified.


Why Crash Typing

The development of effective countermeasures to help prevent bicyclist and pedestrian crashes is hindered by insufficient detail on computerized state crash files. Analysis of these data can provide information on where pedestrian and bicyclist crashes occur (city, street, intersection, two-lane road, etc.), when they occur (time of day, day of week, etc.), and characteristics of the victims involved (age, gender, injury severity, etc.). These data cannot provide a sufficient level of detail regarding the sequence of events leading to the crash.

In the 1970s, methods for typing pedestrian and bicycle crashes were developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to better define the sequence of events and precipitating actions leading to bicycle- and pedestrian-motor vehicle crashes. In the 1990s, the methodologies were applied to over 8,000 pedestrian and bicycle crashes from six States. The results provided a representative summary of the distribution of crash types experienced by pedestrians and bicyclists. This method has evolved over time and was refined during development version 1.0 of PBCAT.

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