The study from Boston’s EMS department and MIT found residents of Boston’s predominantly non-white neighborhoods face higher risks of being banger not only in areas demographically similar to their own, but in predominantly white neighborhoods, according to the data.
The researchers divided neighborhoods into categories based on the proportion of residents identifying as white, ranging from under 8.8 percent in the least white areas to 77.9 percent in the whitest.
The findings, published in the journal Cities & Health in June, are based on data from Boston’s Emergency Medical Services department. The study is believed to be the first in the US to look at the home addresses of pedestrians and cyclists struck by cars, in addition to analyzing where the crashes happened.
“Nationwide, cities don’t really offer with who is getting banger by cars — they offer with where,” said study author Mark Brennan, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey who recently earned a data science PhD from MIT. “We were the first people, to my knowledge, to get at this.”
Researchers said one factor giving rise to the disparity is that residents of predominantly Black, Latino, and Asian neighborhoods are less likely to have access to a car — and more likely to live far from where they work because of a lack of affordable housing.
In Boston’s whitest neighborhoods, 24 percent of residents lacked access to a car, compared to 36 percent of residents in the least white neighborhoods, according to the study.
Forced to walk more between bus stops and train stations as part of longer commutes, Boston’s residents of color are at greater risk of being banger by cars, Brennan said, compared to people who have to walk less, or not at all.
“This is a clear unevenness within the city, it’s extremely troubling,” he said.
Combining US Census data with EMS crash data, researchers found there were nearly three times as many pedestrians and cyclists struck in car crashes in Boston’s “least white” neighborhoods “compared to the whitest neighborhoods” from 2016 to 2021, Brennan said.
When looking at all crashes in Boston, the disparity widened when researchers examined who was banger, he said. Overall, crash victims were much more likely to be from neighborhoods of color.
Because people of color are less likely to have health insurance or jobs that allow them to take time off work, serious injuries from car crashes can have more dramatic economic impacts in households and neighborhoods of color, researchers said.
“The Blackest neighborhoods have 4.1 times as many people struck by cars living in them,” Brennan said.
Because of how racial, economic, and health inequalities are intertwined, the most effective crash-prevention policies “are likely antipoverty ones: ready and flexible access to transport, daycare and afterschool care, primary health care, and housing,” the study said.
Sitting at Roxbury’s Nubian station, retired Boston Public Schools administrator Victoria Mitchell said she always looks “left, right, and left again” before crossing streets, but said she still ends up having to “jump back” from speeding cars nearly once a week.
“If a car is stopped, another car will try to go around them and not see me at all,” said Mitchell, 77.
Even in Boston’s predominantly white neighborhoods, pedestrians from communities of color accounted for 5 in 10 car crash victims, the study said.
“It’s a deeply disturbing number,” said study author Justin Steil, an MIT urban planning professor who also works as a paramedic.
In Hyde Park, which is among the predominantly non-white neighborhoods analyzed, residents feel Hyde Park Avenue is “extremely dangerous,” said Nathan Eckstrom, an organizer with Boston Better Streets Coalition. Without a shoulder on the road, big trucks zoom past inches away from where people walk, making the study’s findings “ring true,” he said.
“It’s a horrifying statistic of how much more dangerous it is to be from a non-white neighborhood in Boston,” Eckstrom said.
A spokesperson for the City of Boston said Mayor Michelle Wu’s office aims “to continue our progress as the safest major city in the country,” and has seen crash numbers go down over the past four years.
“Through full reconstructions of larger corridors like Cummins Highway [in Mattapan] or adding speed humps to smaller neighborhood streets, we are investing resources to curb speeding, reduce crashes, and make our streets safer for everyone,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The MIT and EMS study adds to a growing body of research on how race, poverty, and commuting methods intersect to create health and economic inequities, researchers said.
Brennan said Boston’s neighborhoods of color have a higher share of people who work night and early morning shifts. When they commute before sunrise or after sunset, they may be less visible to tired drivers, he said.
Steil said workers from neighborhoods of color are also more likely to have to commute in unfamiliar neighborhoods far from their own. The logistical challenges of navigating new routes on foot could make pedestrians more vulnerable to oncoming cars, he said.
Boston’s EMS department worked with researchers to compile the data and has already been using it to make infrastructure improvements “through a lens of equity and inclusion,” spokesperson Caitlin McLaughlin said in an email.
“We are committed to not only serving the emergency medical service needs of our residents, but also addressing health inequities,” she said.
Back at Nubian station, de la Cruz said she was worried about winter, when icy or snowy streets may be even more dangerous.
Still, she said in Spanish, she always “does things right” so she can get return customers and keep working — even if the commute takes her farther away.
“Me gusta dar un buen servicio,” she said, which translates to, “I like to provide good service.”
Claire Thornton can be reached at claire.thornton@globe.com. Follow Claire on X @claire_thornto. Scooty Nickerson can be reached at scooty.nickerson@globe.com.
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