Department of City and Regional Planning and Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Berkeley, United States.
Department of City and Regional Planning and Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Berkeley, United States.
Soc Sci Med. 2024 Nov;360:117333. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117333. Epub 2024 Sep 14.
Road traffic injuries (RTIs) pose significant public health threats, particularly for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. While recent studies have revealed adverse impacts of heat exposure on RTI frequency among motorized road users, a research gap persists in understanding these impacts on non-motorized road users, especially in tropical regions where their vulnerability can be heightened due to differential thermal exposure, adaptive capacity, and biological sensitivity. In this study, we compared associations between high temperatures and RTIs across four different crash-involved modes of transportation-pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and car drivers in Taiwan. Leveraging data on RTI records and temperature conditions in Taiwan's six municipalities from 2018 to 2022, we conducted a city-time-stratified case-crossover analysis. We employed distributed lag non-linear models with conditional Poisson regression models to estimate temperature-RTI associations for each mode of transportation, adjusting for various weather factors and unmeasured spatio-temporal patterns. Our findings reveal that individuals using exposed, open transportation modes (i.e., pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists) exhibited higher relative risks of heat-induced RTIs than car drivers, with non-motorized mode users showing greater susceptibility compared to their motorized counterparts. These elevated risks can be attributed to the absence of built-in cooling systems in open travel modes and the increased exertional heat stress implied in active travel. Our study contributes novel insights to a global concern related to climate change, extending its impact to road safety, a health outcome rarely studied in the context of a changing climate. Our findings are thus important, especially for regions where rising temperatures regularly approach or exceed human physiological limits related to heat tolerance in the coming decades. Additionally, our findings hold significance in the existing urban health literature, particularly within the context of the emerging era of micromobility-a category of low-speed, non-enclosed, and lightweight vehicles increasingly integrated into urban activities worldwide.
道路交通事故（RTIs）对公众健康构成重大威胁，尤其是对行人、自行车等弱势道路使用者。尽管最近的研究揭示了热暴露对机动道路使用者 RTI 频率的不利影响，但对于非机动道路使用者，特别是在热带地区，由于热暴露、适应能力和生理敏感性的差异，人们对这些影响的认识仍存在空白。在本研究中，我们比较了台湾四个不同交通方式（行人、自行车、摩托车和汽车驾驶员）的高温与 RTI 之间的关联。利用 2018 年至 2022 年台湾六个直辖市的 RTI 记录和温度数据，我们进行了城市时间分层病例交叉分析。我们采用分布滞后非线性模型和条件泊松回归模型，为每种交通方式调整了各种天气因素和未测量的时空模式，估计了温度-RTI 之间的关联。我们的研究结果表明，使用暴露、开放交通方式（即行人、自行车和摩托车）的个体比汽车驾驶员更容易因热引起的 RTI，而非机动模式使用者比机动模式使用者更容易受到热的影响。这种风险的增加归因于开放出行模式中缺乏内置冷却系统以及主动出行所暗示的更大的体力劳动热应激。我们的研究为与气候变化相关的全球关注问题提供了新的见解，将其影响扩展到道路安全领域，这是一个在气候变化背景下很少研究的健康结果。因此，我们的研究结果尤其重要，特别是在未来几十年，全球许多地区的气温经常接近或超过与热耐受相关的人类生理极限。此外，我们的研究结果在现有的城市健康文献中具有重要意义，特别是在微移动时代的背景下，微移动是一种低速度、非封闭、轻量化的车辆，在全球范围内越来越多地融入城市活动。
