Older pedestrians

AA Foundation for Road Safety Research Risk and safely on the roads the older pedestrian, 1995... 

Finally, although we call all pedestrians vulnerable road users an age-sensitive aspect of vulnerability is frailty. Older people are more frail, and when injured are less likely to survive -either the injury itself or the post-crash treatment. This is reflected in the casualty rates, but should be more pronounced if the analysis is conducted separately on fatal crashes. Keall (1995), therefore, also conducted separate analyses of fatality and severe injury rates and the results of these analyses are plotted in Figure 15-6. These analyses further differentiated the older pedestrians from the rest of the pedestrian population. In addition, the analyses showed... 

Table 15-L Average and 15 percentile street crossing speeds (in meters/second) for younger and older pedestrians in various situations (from Knoblauch et aL, 1996).

Dunbar, G., C. A. Holland and E. A. Maylor (2004). Older Pedestrians A Critical Review of the Literature. Road Safety Research. Report No. 37. Department for Transport, London. 

Collisions with pedestrians of age four and older, since the actual position of infants at the moment of impact is not coded n = 998. 

Data were filtered for frontal vehicle impacts with a pedestrian of age four and older, resulting in 450 collisions. In the following analysis, only cases with impact speed available were considered (see above), resulting in 369 collisions. 

Regarding fatalities, the following model also includes impact speed and age as independent predictors (as the one presented in Table 5.14). It is again based on GIDAS and valid for pedestrians at age 15 and older [6] ... 

Although accidents involving pedestrians most often occur on the nearside of the road, with older people accidents are more likely when the pedestrian is on the far side. This may indicate faulty judgement of speed and distance in relation to an individual s ability to take evasive action. 

Older people do not understand road safety messages, are confused by some controlled pedestrian crossings and ignore safe islands in the middle of roads. 

Many older people do not understand the sequence of traffic movements that provides an all-green phase for pedestrians to cross. 

These are the most common of the hazards facing pedestrians and account for 30% of all the major accidents and 20% of over three-day injuries reported to the HSE each year. It has been estimated that the annual cost of these accidents to the nation is 750m with a direct cost to employers of 300m. The highest reported injuries are reported in the food and related industries. Slips and trips are the biggest single cause of reported injuries in the construction industry. There are over 1000 major injuries on construction sites each year. Older workers. 

McKnight, A.J. 1988. Driver and Pedestrian Training. Transportation in an Aging Society Improving Mobility and Safety for Older Persons (Volume 2). Washington DC Transportation Research Board, National Research Council. 

Staplin, L., D. Harkey, K. Lococo and M. Tarawneh (1997). Intersection Geometric Design and Operational Guidelines for Older Drivers and Pedestrians, Volume I Final Report, Publication No. FHWA-RD-96-132. Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C. 

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. 

Elderly pedestrians crashes. Older people - much more than young adults - walk for the sake of walking and exercising. Thus, for them walking is not only a means to mobility, but also a form of exercise. Fortunately they seem to choose their paths so that they cross fewer roads than younger people (Dunbar et ah, 2004). Yet, as shown above, once they venture out for... 

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