Previous research on motorcycle crashes has shown the frequency and severity of accidents in which a non-priority road user failed to give way to an approaching motorcyclist without seeing him/her, even though the road user had looked in the approaching motorcycle's direction and the motorcycle was visible. These accidents are usually called "looked-but-failed-to-see" (LBFS) accidents. This article deals with the effects that the motorcyclist's speed has in these accidents. It is based on the in-depth study and precise kinematic reconstruction of 44 accident cases involving a motorcyclist and another road user, all occurring in intersections. The results show that, in urban environments, the initial speeds of motorcyclists involved in "looked-but-failed-to-see" accidents are significantly higher than in other accidents at intersections. In rural environments, the difference in speed between LBFS accidents and other accidents is not significant, but further investigations would be necessary to draw any conclusions. These results suggest that speed management, through road design or by other means, could contribute to preventing "looked-but-failedto-see" motorcycle accidents, at least in urban environments.

The objective of this experimental study is to identify the differentiation made by pedestrians, in their crossing decision, between various urban environments, notably in terms of perception of walking pleasantness and safety. This experiment further aims to identify the environmental features that pedestrians take into account and the inferences they develop and use to explain their road crossing decision. Sets of photographs presenting five different environments (city center, inner suburbs, public housing in the outskirts, commercial zone in the outskirts and countryside) were presented to 77 participants divided up into three age groups (pre-adolescents, young and middle adults). Their decision to cross or not, their perception of pleasantness and safety, and the elements they take into account to make a decision were collected for each environment presented. The quantitative results show the pedestrians' perceptions of the pleasantness and safety of public spaces, in terms of walking, largely vary with urban environments. Moreover, the crossing decision significantly varies according to the environment. Pedestrians were significantly more inclined to take the decision to cross in city center than in the other sites presented. The qualitative analysis of the interviews shows that the presence and function of the buildings, the quality of the sidewalks and the marked parking spaces are key factors to explain their crossing decision, by enabling them to infer the density of pedestrians and traffic and the vehicle speed.

This article offers a critical view of the contemporary urban policies undertaken in France in the name of safe, sustainable urban transport strategies. It seeks to show how a spatially and socially selective ordering is under way in French transport planning and policies by presenting an overview of research and empirical results dealing with the narratives and the implementation of these policies. Firstly, urban transport policies were analysed as narratives. Stressing users' individual responsibility and their capacity to adopt economically rational behaviours, and conveying moral injunctions for them to adopt the 'right', safe, healthy, sustainable mobility behaviours, a depoliticized framing of issues characterizes these public policies. Referring to theoretical frameworks related to neoliberalisation as a rationality, our hypothesis is that a neoliberal rationality feeds these policies by ignoring a certain number of macrosocial determinants. Moreover, the use of morality works as a powerful democratic anaesthetic that dissolves any objection. Secondly, we studied how these policies, legitimated by 'noble causes' and depoliticized, influence the organization of traffic in the city, and to what extent they lead to a selective and uneven treatment of urban spaces. While sustainable mobility is frequently presented as a major objective in the field of urban planning for transport and travel, contemporary policies do not seek to reduce polluting modes of travel overall. They rather seek to direct them onto bypass road infrastructures to reduce their negative impacts on the city's main sites. 'Sustainable' policies oppose the car only in certain spaces and for certain uses. With reference to theoretical frameworks related to the entrepreneurial mutation of urban policies, our interpretation is that these policies are part of urban marketing strategies of cities engaged in inter-urban competition processes. These policies lead to an increase in the value and attractiveness of strategic areas of the city, and tend to displace problems (cars, noise, pollution…, and deprived populations) to other parts of the urban territory.

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This study examines road risks among residents of deprived neighbourhoods targeted by social policy compared with residents of other contiguous neighbourhoods that are socially more privileged. The data used are from accident reports filled in by the police. When these data are brought to the level of the population in the areas studied, the adjusted relative risk for those living in sensitive urban areas compared with those living in other areas is assessed at 1.366 (with a 95% confidence interval from 1.240 to 1.502). Distributions by age and gender are then studied. In the discussion, several hypotheses concerning behaviour, mobility and socio-spatial factors are discussed.