Improving safety of older road users

1
Improving safety of older road users

• Challenges and opportunities from a road
  infrastructure perspective
• Fred Wegman
• SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research

2
Ageing and driving, cycling and walking

• Differences (with other age groups) reflect both
  weaknesses and strengths
• Accidents
• With another vehicle
• Legally at fault
• At intersections (left turn, when merging)

3
Safety problems of older road users

• Reduce the need to make complex decisions
• Reduce the need to perform time-related tasks
  (determined by external factors)
• Use design elements which match with experience

4
Safety principles for road design

• Make tasks in traffic simpler by eliminating
  high-risk conditions and circumstances
• If decisions have to be taken, reduce chance on
  human errors

5
Safety principles for design of our road system
(I)

• Make the road function clear to the road users
  introduce functional road network hierarchy
• Increase predictability (by using standard
  elements) road course and behaviour of other
  road users
• Increase homogeneous road use prevention of
  large differences in vehicle speed, mass and
  direction

6
Safety principles for design our road system
(II)

• These principles form the basis of the
  Netherlands Sustainable Safety philosophy

7
Land-use planning

• Reduce the amount of travel needed to access
  services/facilities/social networks by adopting
  the concept of compact urban form and compact
  communities
• Facilitate safe use of public transport
• Make walking and cycling safe (frailty!)

8
Traffic planning

• Functional classification of road network
• Preventing necessity of high risks manoeuvres
• Make driving speeds more homogeneous and reduce
  speeds

9
Traffic engineering

• Apply well known design elements
• See for example Highway Design Handbook for Older
  Drivers and Pedestrians (US DoT, 2001)
• See for example Ageing and Transport (OECD, 2001)
  
• See for example proceedings of two conferences in
  2001/2002 UK and Australia
• And most probably more

10
Example of road design positive offset
Illustration Highway Design Handbook for older
Drivers and Pedestrians, Federal Highway
Administration, USA
11
Main Conclusion

• Applying three general safety principles for
  design of our road system across different
  jurisdictions should be encouraged to improve
  road safety, also of older road users

12
Recommendations for Europe

• Review literature on safety of older road users
  and infrastructure and produce EU-handbook
• Review existing road design guidelines in EU
  Member States and improve them, if necessary
• Demonstrate and promote good practices
• Include safety of older road users in 6th
  Framework research programme