Risk and safety on the roads: the older pedestrian

T Carthy, D Packham, D SalterDepartment of PsychologyUniversity of Newcastle upon Tyne

D SilcockRoss Silcock Partnership

Cost: 45,000, partly funded by the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund
Published: March 1995

Following the publication of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne's earlier research in 1993 (FDN11), it was agreed that the problems facing the older pedestrian warranted further investigation. The contract was awarded in 1993, the European Year of Older People and Solidarity between Generations, with the intention that the study would recommend ways of alleviating such problems. Four separate phases of the work were specified:

• to collect information by interview and questionnaire that would provide a good picture of pedestrian activity in relation to differing lifestyles adopted by older people;
• to observe older pedestrians crossing the road at sites identified as presenting difficulties;
• to devise and test experimental measures of older people's judgement of speed and distance;
• to link together data from the above phases leading to the recommendations.

Four housing areas in Newcastle upon Tyne were chosen as representing areas where about 25 per cent of the local population was over 65 years of age. Housing types covered owner-occupied, private rental, housing association and council rental.

The study included:

• a structured interview with 215 residents on journeys, lifestyles, and attitudes to and experience as pedestrians;
• supplementary evidence on attitudes and experience from 181 respondents' postal questionnaires;
• 415 observations of road crossing by a mix of pedestrians at two sites, one with and one without pedestrian crossing facilities;
• video filming of one location experiencing varying vehicle speed and then asking 181 respondents to assess vehicle arrival times.

The findings included:

• 75 per cent of journeys were mainly for shopping or to the shops, and entailed using the bus or travelling by foot;
• driving experience was strongly related to social area and gender; in one area none of the women had ever held a driving licence;
• violent crime and house theft were of greater concern than road safety considerations, with the condition of the pavements of more concern than speeding traffic;
• concentration skills contributed significantly to the ways older people coped with the road;
• older people were disproportionately represented in the potentially unsafe crossings activity; failure to yield and an excessive degree of caution in crossing only part of the road emerged as problems, resulting sometimes in panic when isolated in the middle of the road;
• failure of initial judgement combined with failure to modify behaviour to avoid a developing incident meant that in traffic there are several interacting sources of threat to the older pedestrian.

The report recommended that:

• drivers need to pay some attention to pedestrians in their assessment of risk on the road - perhaps with a specially targeted campaign;
• environmentally friendly traffic calming schemes should continue to be developed;
• road safety measures should take account of the elderly, who may not understand the principles underlying traffic movement and whose behaviour is uncertain in a road setting involving complex choice;
• existing road safety facilities, such as pelican crossings, should be amended to ease understanding by the elderly; greater effort should be made by road safety practitioners to put themselves in the position of the elderly users and to discuss problem areas with them instead of assuming that users of such facilities understand the principles of traffic movement;
• the number of central carriageway refuges should be increased so that roads can be crossed in two stages.

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