Mobility risk: using ambulance operations data to analyze the spatial and social dimensions of health disadvantage

Abstract

The risk of death and disability for people after being struck by a car is unevenly distributed geographically and socially. This paper uses Emergency Medical Services records in Boston, Massachusetts, to analyze the characteristics of the locations where vehicles struck pedestrians and cyclists – and the characteristics of the neighborhoods where those individuals live. An individual’s risk of encountering this sort of traffic risk, which we term mobility risk, is disproportionately higher among residents of neighborhoods with large shares of Black and Latino residents because of their disproportionate exposure to crashes both within and also outside of their home neighborhoods. Overall, residents of predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods are about four times more likely than residents of predominantly white neighborhoods to be struck as a pedestrian; this disparity in crash exposure is almost 1.5 times larger than one would expect based on crash location alone. For residents of largely Black and Latino neighborhoods, being struck by a car is a common yet consequential phenomenon that reproduces health inequity.