Citation

Gálvez-Pérez D, Guirao B, Ortuño A, Picado-Santos L. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022; 19(4): e2280.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph19042280

PMID

35206469

Abstract

With the progressive ageing of the population, the study of the relations between road safety and elderly users is becoming increasingly relevant. Although the decline of pedestrian skills in the elderly has been widely studied in the literature, few studies have been devoted to the contributing built environmental factors of the elderly pedestrian collisions, such as the sidewalk density, the presence of traffic lights, or even some indicator related to land use or the socioeconomic features of the urban fabric. This paper contributes to the limited literature on elderly pedestrian safety by applying a negative binomial regression to a set of built environmental variables to study the occurrence of accidents involving elderly and younger (non-elderly) pedestrians in Madrid (Spain) between 2006 and 2018. The model considers a selection of built environmental factors per city district, linked to land use, infrastructure, and socioeconomic indicators.

RESULTS have highlighted that the elderly pedestrian collisions could be avoided with the existence of a wider sidewalk in the district and a greater traffic lights density. Unlike younger pedestrian accidents, these accidents are much more favored in ageing districts with higher traffic flows.

Language: en

Keywords

road safety; accident analysis; built environment; elderly pedestrians; road traffic collisions; street design