Crashes pedestrians, involving

Sheppard, D. and M. Pattinson (1986). Interviews with elderly pedestrians involved in road crashes. TRRL report RR 98. Transportation Road Research Laboratory, Crowthome, UK. 

Causes of child and teen pedestrian crashes. On the basis of the information in Table 15-5 and other findings we can characterize the crash-causing behaviors at different ages as follows. The youngest pedestrians, 1-2 years old, rarely venture out into the street by themselves, and when they are involved in an accident they are more likely to be struck by cars backing up on driveways and private property. Slightly older children, 3-9 years old, are more likely to collide with vehicles when they dart out into the traffic stream (often from between parked cars) because they do not yet have safe pedestrian skills. 

Speed is generally associated with injury severity, but it also has a consistent effect on the likelihood of a crash. The MAIDS crash investigation teams concluded that in 8 percent of the crashes the motorcycle s speed contributed to the crash, compared to only 5 percent of the crashes in which the other vehicle s speed contributed to the crash. In Spain, Lardelli-Claret et al. (2005) assessed the accident causes of all the PTW injury collisions that occurred in Spain from 1993 to 2002, that did not involve a pedestrian, and in which only one of the drivers or riders was considered culpable. With a total data base of 128,273 crash-involved mopeds and 62,005 crash-involved motorcycles, they calculated the crash risk of the culpable riders relative to that of the non-culpable riders. After adjusting for various confounding variables, they found that the factors that were most over-involved in culpable crashes were inappropriate speed (with an odds ratio of 13 for motorcycles and 10 for mopeds), and excessive speed (with an odds ratio of 7 for motorcycles and 6 for mopeds). The effects of speed in general are discussed in much more details in Chapter 8). 

The safety research for NHTSA is done mostly through grants and contracts to private industry and universities. A considerable portion of the research involves gathering accident data in order to have a better idea of what is actually occurring. Other research investigates crashworthiness of cars, crash survivability, seat belt use, the impairing effects of alcohol and drug use on drivers, public acceptance of the amended national 55 mph speed limit, and motorcycle and pedestrian safety. 

---