The importance of age for injury severity among car drivers and pedestrians

Kullgren, Anders<sup>1,2</sup>; Lie, Anders<sup>3,4</sup>; Strandroth, Johan<sup>2,3</sup>; Rizzi, Matteo<sup>5,6</sup>; Tingvall, Claes<sup>2,3</sup>

Affiliations

¹Folksam Research

²Chalmers University of Technology

³Swedish Transport Administration

⁴Karolinska Institutet

⁵Vectura Consulting

⁶Monash University Accident Research Centre

Abstract

The risk of injury is known to be related to age. The elderly population has a far higher risk of both serious injury and fatality, for a given severity of impact. While this is known, it is not always used for the understanding of the options for injury prevention that is available or could be developed. In the present study, the risk of in particular pedestrian injuries and fatalities were related to age. It was found, that the risk for older pedestrians is far higher than for younger, risk ratios of over 10 for the oldest age group were recorded. At the same time, the majority of fatalities for pedestrians in Sweden occurred in 50 km/h zones.

In conclusion, the combination of the very high risks for elderly pedestrians and the occurrence of many of the deaths in speed zones of 50 km/h indicate that prevention techniques related to the vehicle would be very effective. Such techniques are both more friendly fronts of cars as well as emergency braking systems. At the same time, modifications to the speed management might be very useful since small changes of impact energy changes the risk of fatality substantially

Links

URL: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv22/22ESV-000225.pdf

Cited Works (4)

Year	Entry
2011	Strandroth J, Rizzi M, Sternlund S, Lie A, Tingvall C. The correlation between pedestrian injury severity in real-life crashes and euro NCAP pedestrian test results. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 13-16, 2011; Washington, DC.
1991	Evans L. Traffic Safety and the Driver. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold; 1991.
2002	Liu XJ, Yang JK, Lövsund P. A study of influences of vehicle speed and front structure on pedestrian impact responses using mathematical models. Traffic Inj Prev. 2002;3(1):31-42.
2010	Fredriksson R, Rosén E. Integrated pedestrian countermeasures: potential of head injury reduction combining passive and active countermeasures. In: Proceedings of the 2010 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 15-17, 2010; Hannover, Germany.141-153.

Cited By (3)

Year	Entry
2011	Strandroth J, Rizzi M, Sternlund S, Lie A, Tingvall C. The correlation between pedestrian injury severity in real-life crashes and euro NCAP pedestrian test results. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 13-16, 2011; Washington, DC.
2012	Strandroth J, Rizzi M, Kullgren A, Tingvall C. Head‐on collisions between passenger cars and heavy goods vehicles: injury risk functions and benefits of Autonomous Emergency Braking. In: Proceedings of the 2012 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Injury. September 12-14, 2012; Dublin, Ireland.342-351.
2011	Strandroth J, Rizzi M, Sternlund S, Lie A, Tingvall C. The correlation between pedestrian injury severity in real-life crashes and Euro NCAP pedestrian test results. Traffic Inj Prev. 2011;12(6):604-613.