Spatial Econometric Analysis of Road Traffic Crashes

Impact of urban form and street infrastructure on pedestrian-motorist collisions

This study examines the impact of urban form and street infrastructure on pedestrian safety in Atlanta, Georgia, and Boston, Massachusetts. With a significant rise in pedestrian fatalities over the past decade, understanding how cities' built environments influence safety is critical. We conducted geospatial analyses and statistical tests, revealing unique patterns in each city. Atlanta's sprawling, motorist-oriented layout is associated with increased pedestrian accidents, particularly at crosswalks, due to limited land use diversity, arterial roads, and streets with high speed limits and multiple lanes. In contrast, Boston's compact, pedestrian-oriented design leads to improved safety, featuring safer pedestrian crossings, greater land use diversity, reduced arterial roads and lower speed limits on single-lane streets. This study also highlights the importance of diverse urban forms and pedestrian infrastructure in shaping pedestrian safety. While population density and land use diversity impact accident rates, the presence of crosswalks and street configurations play crucial roles. Our findings underscore the urgency for urban planners to prioritize pedestrian safety through targeted interventions, such as enhancing crosswalks, reducing speed limits and promoting mixed land use. Future research should explore additional variables, alternative modelling techniques and non-linear approaches to gain a more comprehensive understanding of these complex relationships.

Sustainability and Digital Transformation in the Visegrad Group of Central European Countries

The evolution of the digital transformation presents new challenges and many new opportunities, and provides unique solutions to individual issues, both for sectors and regions. The challenges posed by the digital world have a significant impact on social and economic processes, as well as our environment. This paper aims to provide an indicator-based understanding of the main characteristics of digitalization promoting sustainable development in the member countries of the Visegrad Cooperation. The main goal of this research is to study the relationship between digitalization transformation and sustainability together. One of the basic indicators of the article is the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI). We examined interconnections between the dimensions of the DESI index and the indicators of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets together in the V4, presented the change, evaluated the selected countries based on these aspects, and set up their ranking. Competitiveness performance data shed light on the situation in Hungary within the V4 countries, pointing out the strengths and shortcomings. The results show the extent of digital performance in each country and the relationship between their digital performance and sustainability indicators.