Understanding Pedestrians' Perception of Safety and Safe Mobility Practices

Walking is one of the greenest and most common travel modes. However, evidence shows a trend of decreased walking, and safety is a key barrier preventing many people from walking. Additionally, there is a limited understanding of pedestrians’ safe mobility practices and safety perception. Drawing on 449 survey responses from a representative sample in the United Kingdom, our work highlights how identities and walking situations intersect with individuals’ safety perceptions and diverse practices of pedestrians’ safe mobility. The role of technology used for negotiating safety and current challenges in both safe route planning and walking are also highlighted. Our work extends existing insights into pedestrians’ perception of safety and practices by adding empirical evidence and more nuanced contexts. This paper proposes two implications for design in response to design opportunities that surfaced from our mixed-method data analysis. Both the contributions and limitations of our work are also discussed.