Pedestrian Fatalities & Injuries in Hit-and-Run Crashes in California, Tennessee & the US: Recent Trends and Risk Factors

Project Description

Both pedestrian fatalities and overall hit-and-run (HAR) fatalities in the US are at a 40-year high, but no post-COVID trends in fatal HAR pedestrian crashes have been examined despite increased reports of reckless driving, increasing vehicle weight and height, and increases in distracted driving. Further, few studies have examined trends in non-fatal pedestrian HAR crashes. Using 2009-2022 national crash fatality data and data on crashes at all severity levels in California and Tennessee, we will examine time trends in all HAR crashes, all pedestrian victim crashes, and how these are related. We will also examine the risk of serious injury or death among HAR vs. non-HAR crashes to try to elucidate the relationship between HAR and outcome severity. Using regression techniques, we will then examine risk factors for single vehicle-pedestrian crashes, including comparing risk factors for HAR vs non-HAR crashes and predictors of whether drivers are eventually identified in HAR crashes. Factors to be examined include crash characteristics, victim characteristics, and driver/vehicle characteristics, where available. We also plan to examine the joint characteristics of driver-pedestrian pairs, such as by age, race or sex, to understand whether this pairing affects the likelihood of fleeing. Finally, we will examine the effect of several inflection points on HAR crash rates and outcomes for pedestrians, including the effects of the COVID pandemic and, potentially, the effects of specific state-level policy changes around licensing laws, given past research linking HAR to unlicensed drivers.