A new transportation mode under a risky environment: the geographical assessment of personal mobility safety in South Korea

Personal mobility has numerous advantages as a new and environmentally friendly mode of transportation that can replace or supplement other mobility options. Although safety issues associated with personal mobility have become prevalent with increasing demand and service supply, the factors associated with injury severity in personal mobility device-related crashes have not been widely studied, particularly in Asia. To address this gap, this study developed an ordered logit model as a benchmark and a geographically weighted ordered logit (GWOL) model to identify the spatial variations using five years of nationwide crash data in South Korea. The results of the ordered logit model showed that speeding had the strongest positive association with injury severity, followed by the crash type involving collisions between personal mobility devices. The GWOL model results indicated that the statistical significance of the factors and their magnitudes varied geographically aross South Korea. Notably, the higher probability of injury severity in crashes between personal mobility devices and pedestrians, crashes between personal mobility devices and bicycles, and those occurring at nighttime and peak hours was observed in the southeast region. However, a higher probability of injury severity was identified in crashes due to rainfall and signal violations while a lower probability was shown in crashes between personal mobility devices and other vehicles in the southwest region. Although the degree of association varied geographically, broadly consistent positive or negative associations were observed for speeding-related and snowfall-related crashes and those related to the age of riders and roles (i.e., whether the rider was the perpetrator or the victim). This study represents one of the first nationwide applications of a geographically weighted ordered logit model to personal mobility device-related crash injury severity in South Korea. The findings identify where the associations between observed crash-related characteristics and injury severity vary across regions, and provide empirical support for geographically tailored safety interventions.