Spatial Pedestrian Safety in Riyadh School Zones: A Data-Driven Approach

Evaluating Spatial Pedestrian Safety in Riyadh’s School Zones Using Multiple Linear Regression and Machine Learning: A Data-Driven Approach

Authors

  • Ala Husni Alsoud Consolidated Consultants Group (CCG)
  • AHMAD H. ALOMARI Consolidated Consultants Group (CCG) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4046-8965
  • MOAMAR QRARAH Consolidated Consultants Group (CCG)
  • ZAKI ABU AHMAD

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.62161/sauc.v11.5977

Keywords:

School Zone, Traffic Safety, Pedestrian, Spatial, Regression, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

This study comprehensively analyzes pedestrian-runover crash density (the number of crashes per square kilometer of district area) in Riyadh’s school zones, employing advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, including Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Machine Learning (ML), to enhance urban efficiency, quality of life, and resilience. Data were collected from 884 school zones distributed across Riyadh, encompassing diverse infrastructural, socioeconomic, and demographic contexts. The optimized MLR model identified significant predictors, including district road lengths, average crash severity (EPDO), average income, population density, and transit stop availability, which collectively explained approximately 65% of the crash-density variability. The Random Forest ML model further improved predictive accuracy (R² ≈ 0.88), revealing complex, nonlinear interactions among key variables, including traffic volume, speed limits, lane counts, crosswalk availability, and student population. Integrating traditional regression with cutting-edge ML methodologies, this research provides actionable insights for policymakers, urban planners, and engineers, enabling targeted, data-driven interventions to enhance pedestrian safety and promote sustainable, smart urban mobility in Riyadh’s school zones.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Global Statistics ℹ️

Cumulative totals since publication
49
Views
21
Downloads
70
Total
Downloads by format:
PDF (Español (España)) 11 PDF 10

Author Biography

AHMAD H. ALOMARI , Consolidated Consultants Group (CCG)

Dr. Ahmad H. Alomari is a Corresponding Author and Traffic & Transportation Expert at Consolidated Consultants Group (CCG), with extensive consultancy experience across the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. He also serves as Professor of Civil Engineering at Yarmouk University, Jordan, specializing in transportation engineering, traffic operation, transportation planning, road safety, and smart mobility solutions.

References

Alharbi, R., Alghamdi, A., Al-Jafar, R., Almuwallad, A., & Chowdhury, S. (2024). Identifying the key characteristics, trends, and seasonality of pedestrian traffic injury at a major trauma center in Saudi Arabia: a registry-based retrospective cohort study, 2017–2022. BMC emergency medicine, 24(1), 135. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12873-024-01051-5

Alomari, A. H., Al-Deek, H., Sandt, A., Rogers Jr, J. H., & Hussain, O. (2016). Regional evaluation of bus rapid transit with and without transit signal priority. Transportation Research Record, 2554(1), 46-59. https://doi.org/10.3141/2554-06

Bahrami, V., Lavrenz, S., & Ahmed, M. M. (2024). Severity Analysis of Pedestrian and Bike Crashes in School Buffer Zones. Transportation Research Record, 03611981241297682. https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981241297682

Datasaudi. (2025). A unified platform to present and analyze the latest economic and social data for the Kingdom. Ministry of Economy & Planning. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. https://datasaudi.sa/en

DiMaggio, C., & Li, G. (2013). Effectiveness of a safe routes to school program in preventing school-aged pedestrian injury. Pediatrics, 131(2), 290-296. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2012-2182

Donnell, E. T., Hanks, E., Porter, R. J., Cook, L., Srinivasan, R., Li, F., ... & Eccles, K. A. (2020). The Development of Crash Modification Factors: Highway Safety Statistical Paper Synthesis. No. FHWA-HRT-20-069. United States. FHWA, Federal Highway Administration.. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/20069/20069.pdf

Ehsani, J. P., Michael, J. P., & MacKENZIE, E. J. (2023). The future of road safety: challenges and opportunities. The Milbank Quarterly, 101(Suppl 1), 613. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12644

Esri. (2025). ArcGIS Pro, The world's leading desktop GIS software. https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-pro/overview

Eun, S. J. (2023). Effects of tougher school zone laws on road traffic safety in school zones for children in South Korea. Journal of Transport & Health, 32, 101687. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jth.2023.101687

Farid, A., Lin, E., & Pande, A. (2024). Analysis of School Zone Crash Severities with an Equity Lens: A Random Parameters Modeling Approach. Transportation Research Record, 03611981241295716. https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981241295716

Flanagan, R. and Morgan, R. (2023). Improving traffic safety during arrival and dismissal for students at the Quinsigamond School. Project Report. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA, United States. https://digital.wpi.edu/downloads/rr172143p

Forward, S., Henriksson, P., Silvano, A. P., Miyoba, T., Sinkala, S., Mawele, S., & Mwamba, D. (2025). Increasing traffic safety at schools in Zambia: a before and after study. Reg. No., VTI: 2022/0296-8.3 https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:vti:diva-21493

Hu, X., Deng, H., Liu, H., Zhou, J., Liang, H., Chen, L., & Zhang, L. (2025). Assessment of the collision risk on the road around schools during morning peak period. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 210, 107854. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2024.107854

Ivan, K., Benedek, J., & Ciobanu, S. M. (2019). School-aged pedestrian–vehicle crash vulnerability. Sustainability, 11(4), 1214. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11041214

James, G., Witten, D., Hastie, T., & Tibshirani, R. (2021). An Introduction to Statistical Learning: with Applications in R. (2nd ed.). Springer.

Kingham, S., Sabel, C. E., & Bartie, P. (2011). The impact of the ‘school run’on road traffic accidents: A spatio-temporal analysis. Journal of transport geography, 19(4), 705-711. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2010.08.011

Kutner, M. H., Nachtsheim, C. J., & Neter, J. (2005). Applied Linear Statistical Models. McGraw-Hill.

Lee, G., Park, Y., Kim, J., & Cho, G. H. (2016). Association between intersection characteristics and perceived crash risk among school-aged children. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 97, 111-121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2016.09.001

Lee, I. J., Sagar, S., Agarwal, N., Srinivasan, S., & Steiner, R. (2024). Data-Driven Approach to Develop a Master Plan to Prioritize Schools for the Safe Routes to School Program. Transportation Research Record, 03611981241250019. https://doi.org/10.1177/03611981241250019

Lordswill, N. T., Jean-Francois, W., Fondzenyuy, S. K., Feudjio Tezong, S. L., Ndonue, A. R., Usami, D. S., & Persia, L. (2024). Assessment and countermeasures selection for safer roads to schools in the city of Yaoundé: progressive evaluation using surveys and iRAP methodology. Transportation Research Procedia, 1-8. AIIT 4th International Conference on Transport Infrastructure and Systems (TIS ROMA 2024), 19th - 20th September 2024, Rome Italy. https://iris.uniroma1.it/bitstream/11573/1722401/1/Ndingwan_Assessment-and-countermeasures-selection_2024.pdf

Mienye, I. D., & Jere, N. (2024). A survey of decision trees: Concepts, algorithms, and applications. IEEE access. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3416838

Montgomery, D. C. (2017). Design and analysis of experiments. John wiley & sons.

Montgomery, D. C., Peck, E. A., & Vining, G. G. (2021). Introduction to linear regression analysis. John Wiley & Sons.

Moradi, A., Soori, H., Kavousi, A., Eshghabadi, F., & Jamshidi, E. (2016). Spatial factors affecting the frequency of pedestrian traffic crashes: A systematic review. Archives of trauma research, 5(4), e30796. https://doi.org/10.5812/atr.30796

Oh, J., & Kim, J. (2025). Potential risk factors of child pedestrian crashes after-school hours in Seoul, Korea. Journal of Transport Geography, 123, 104084. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2024.104084

Pedregosa, F., Varoquaux, G., Gramfort, A., Michel, V., Thirion, B., Grisel, O., ... & Duchesnay, É. (2011). Scikit-learn: Machine learning in Python. the Journal of machine Learning research, 12, 2825-2830.

Probst, P., Wright, M. N., & Boulesteix, A.-L. (2020). Hyperparameters and tuning strategies for Random Forest. WIREs Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 10(3), e1371. https://doi.org/10.1002/widm.1371

Regidor, J. R. F., Kamid, S. A., Latonero, G. S. D., Abao, N. S. A., & Sigua, R. D. (2023). Evaluation and Improvement of Road Safety In the Vicinity of Schools. Philippine Institute of Civil Engineers 2023 National Convention. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378077600_Evaluation_and_Improvement_of_Road_Safety_in_the_Vicinity_of_Schools

Rothman, L., Buliung, R., Howard, A., Macarthur, C., & Macpherson, A. (2017a). The school environment and student car drop-off at elementary schools. Travel Behaviour and Society, 9, 50-57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tbs.2017.03.001

Rothman, L., Howard, A., Buliung, R., Macarthur, C., Richmond, S. A., & Macpherson, A. (2017b). School environments and social risk factors for child pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions: A case-control study. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 98, 252-258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2016.10.017

Rothman, L., Macarthur, C., To, T., Buliung, R., & Howard, A. (2015). Motor vehicle-pedestrian collisions and walking to school: the role of the built environment. Pediatrics, 133(5), 776-784. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2013-2317

Shuai, Z., & Kwon, T. J. (2025). Analyzing Winter Crash Dynamics Using Spatial Analysis and Crash Frequency Prediction Models with SHAP Interpretability. Future Transportation, 5(1), 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/futuretransp5010017

Tetali, S., Edwards, P., Murthy, G. V. S., & Roberts, I. (2016). Road traffic injuries to children during the school commute in Hyderabad, India: cross-sectional survey. Injury prevention, 22(3), 171-175. https://doi.org/10.1136/injuryprev-2015-041854

Turner, S., Sener, I. N., Martin, M. E., Das, S., Hampshire, R. C., Fitzpatrick, K., ... & Wijesundera, R. K. (2017). Synthesis of methods for estimating pedestrian and bicyclist exposure to risk at areawide levels and on specific transportation facilities. No. FHWA-SA-17-041. United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration. Office of Safety. https://highways.dot.gov/sites/fhwa.dot.gov/files/2022-06/fhwasa17014.pdf

UNICEF. (2022). Technical guidance for child and adolescent road safety. New York: United Nations Children’s Fund.

University of Cambridge. (2019). Children who walk to school less likely to be overweight or obese. ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 May 2019. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190521101344.htm.

Washington, S., Karlaftis, M. G., Mannering, F., & Anastasopoulos, P. (2020). Statistical and econometric methods for transportation data analysis. Chapman and Hall/CRC.

WHO, World Health Organization. (2023a). Global status report on road safety 2023. Geneva: WHO Press. https://www.who.int/teams/social-determinants-of-health/safety-and-mobility/global-status-report-on-road-safety-2023

WHO, World Health Organization. (2023b). Reducing Road Crash Deaths in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. https://www.who.int/news/item/20-06-2023-reducing-road-crash-deaths-in-the-kingdom-of-saudi-arabia

Yamarthi, D., Raman, H., Parvin, S. (2025). United States Road Accident Prediction using Machine Learning Algorithms. arXiv:2505.06246v1 28 Apr 2025. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.06246v1

Yu, C. Y., & Zhu, X. (2016). Planning for safe schools: Impacts of school siting and surrounding environments on traffic safety. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 36(4), 476-486. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X15616460

Zhang, K., Tamakloe, R., Cao, M., & Kim, I. (2024). Exploring fatal/severe pedestrian injury crash frequency at school zone crash hotspots: using interpretable machine learning to assess the micro-level street environment. Journal of Transport Geography, 121, 104034. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2024.104034

Zhao, X., Li, J., Ding, H., Zhang, G., & Rong, J. (2015). A generic approach for examining the effectiveness of traffic control devices in school zones. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 82, 134-142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2015.05.021

Published

2025-12-01

How to Cite

Husni Alsoud, A., ALOMARI , A., QRARAH , M., & ABU AHMAD , Z. (2025). Spatial Pedestrian Safety in Riyadh School Zones: A Data-Driven Approach: Evaluating Spatial Pedestrian Safety in Riyadh’s School Zones Using Multiple Linear Regression and Machine Learning: A Data-Driven Approach. Street Art & Urban Creativity, 11(7), 231–257. https://doi.org/10.62161/sauc.v11.5977