Macro-level literature analysis on pedestrian safety: Bibliometric overview, conceptual frames, and trends

Due to the high volume of documents in the pedestrian safety field, the current study conducts a systematic bibliometric analysis on the researches published before October 3, 2021, based on the science-mapping approach. Science mapping enables us to present a broad picture and comprehensive review of a significant number of documents using co-citation, bibliographic coupling, collaboration, and co-word analysis. To this end, a dataset of 6311 pedestrian safety papers was collected from the Web of Science Core Collection database. First, a descriptive analysis was carried out, covering whole yearly publications, most-cited papers, and most productive authors, as well as sources, affiliations, and countries. In the next steps, science mapping was implemented to clarify the social, intellectual, and conceptual structures of pedestrian-safety research using the VOSviewer and Bibliometrix R-package tools. Remarkably, based on intellectual structure, pedestrian safety demonstrated an association with seven research areas: Pedestrian crash frequency models, Pedestrian injury severity crash models, Traffic engineering measures in pedestrians' safety, Global reports around pedestrian accident epidemiology, Effect of age and gender on pedestrians' behavior, Distraction of pedestrians, and Pedestrian crowd dynamics and evacuation. Moreover, according to conceptual structure, five major research fronts were found to be relevant, namely Collision avoidance and intelligent transportation systems (ITS), Epidemiological studies of pedestrian injury and prevention, Pedestrian road crossing and behavioral factors, Pedestrian flow simulation, and Walkable environment and pedestrian safety. Finally, autonomous vehicle, pedestrian detection, and collision avoidance themes were identified as having the greatest centrality and development degrees in recent years.

Automated summary

This study conducted a systematic bibliometric analysis on pedestrian safety research before October 3, 2021 using the science-mapping approach. The analysis revealed the social, intellectual, and conceptual structures of pedestrian safety research. The study identified several research areas in pedestrian safety, such as pedestrian crash models, traffic engineering measures, and global epidemiological reports. Additionally, the study found major research fronts including collision avoidance and intelligent transportation systems, pedestrian injury and prevention studies, and pedestrian road crossing and behavioral factors. Moreover, the centrality and development degrees of autonomous vehicle, pedestrian detection, and collision avoidance themes were found to be prominent.