Road safety analysis
Crossing to get there
One in three children in Cancún crosses an avenue to walk to primary school; half of those crossings are concentrated at 50 corners, most already in the municipal crossings inventory, which makes them easier to prioritise.
In one sentenceTurns an inventory of thousands of crossings into a list of 50 corners that hold half of all school crossings.
Spanish original: Cruzar para llegar
How many avenues does a child cross to get to school?
The way to school is not measured only in metres: it is measured in avenues to cross.
This atlas identifies the most used school crossings and compares them with crashes and with the municipal crossings inventory.
Key findings
One in three
34% of children aged 6–11 cross at least one avenue on their shortest walk to primary school; almost 7,000 cross two or more.
Fifty corners
The 50 most used crossings account for half of all school crossings; 22 had crashes in 2024.
A basis for prioritising
35 of those 50 crossings are already in the municipal inventory of assessed crossings: ranking them by school flow gives a short list for scheduling interventions.
Approach
Step 1
Trace the walking route from every block to its nearest primary school and geometrically detect each avenue it crosses.
Step 2
Add up the children aged 6–11 who pass through each crossing and cross them with 2024 crashes.
Step 3
Compare the most used school crossings with the municipal inventory and its interventions.
How to read it
- The route is the shortest to the nearest primary school, not to each child's assigned school.
- Crashes cover a single year (2024).
- Field data from the inventory are available for part of the crossings.
Data
OpenStreetMap
Pedestrian network with road class.
Business directory 2026
Primary schools.
2020 Census
Children aged 6–11 by block.
Crash register 2024
Georeferenced traffic crashes (INEGI).
Municipal crossings inventory
Crossings assessed and treated by the municipality.
What supports the method
- OMS (2013)A pedestrian hit at 30 km/h or less has about a 90% chance of survival; at 45 km/h, less than 50% (p. 39). The trip to school is a specific risk for children (p. 108).
- Brian Tefft · AAA Foundation (2011)Risk curve of serious injury or death by impact speed (p. 4).
Paraphrased; page numbers refer to the PDF consulted. The library is in Spanish.
What you just saw
School-by-school pedestrian routing, avenue-crossing detection and crash matching.
What else this method can answer
- Which routes to clinics or bus stops cross dangerous avenues?
- Where would a school street make sense?
- What changes if a new school opens?
In other places
Replicable with OpenStreetMap, census and crash records.
Line of work
C · Road safety: prioritising corridors and crossings →Do you have a similar question in your city?
Describe the problem
Next in Safe streets and riskThe city arrived before the street