Traffic safety in Portland's urban center and surrounding areas

    The Eric Dumbaugh and Robert Rae article about community design and traffic safety really got me thinking about the traffic related hazards that I see on a daily basis in the Portland metro area, both in central and neighborhood settings. One of the issues that I always think about it lighting; can you see pedestrians and other vehicles, and is so how well can you see them? I often seen neighborhoods and main roads with so little lighting that unless its light out, you can barely navigate the intersections and neighborhoods you are in. Lack of street lighting and high visibility signage makes the potential for crashes significantly higher, while also making the likelihood of a human/vehicle collision also significantly higher. I would be interested to see what the results would be if we took an intersection  or groups of intersections that have poor lighting and track the number of crashes that occur, then see what the difference in incident rates were once more lighting and high visibility signage was added. While speed does play a large roll in safety as the article suggested, speed reduction along with a more pointed focus on visibility would impact the rates of traffic incidents, at least within urban and suburban environments, in a way that could potentially increase safety both for motorists and pedestrians. 

    There should also be some consideration given to taking a deeper look at where in the city of Portland these high rates of vehicle safety incidents are occurring and seeing if there is any geographic region where traffic patters clash with infrastructure the most; and on top of that look at if there are any economic and class related differences between the rate of traffic incident and geographic area.    

source

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01944360902950349?scroll=top&needAccess=true