Relationship between Traffic Safety and Physical Activity

Well, it has been a while since my last post – between projects, presentations, and family, I haven’t had much time to write. On the positive, there have been a lot of interesting developments beginning to coalesce on our efforts to integrate health and design! But before I go into those details, I just wanted to share another ‘uh-duh’ study. This time, coming from the FABULOUS  PLOSE ONE website. While we all know about the studies outlining the increase in likelihood of obesity for every hour spent in the car, but how do these massive vehicular networks affect the neighborhoods and communities they serve? This great paper discusses how the perception of traffic safety impacts someone’s likelihood to engage in neighborhood based physical activity (walking, jogging, etc.). What they found was that positive improvements to traffic safety meant that people would be more likely to engage in PA! Uh-Duh! As a planner and designer, this tells me that our typical transportation approaches that improves efficiency by increasing speed and volume can negatively affect our ability to lead a healthy life!

Thanks for taking the time to read this! I hope you check it the study! Find it Here !