THE FRAGILITY OF OLDER ROAD USERS IN BRITAIN Kit Mitchell

FRAGILITY As people grow older, they become more physically fragile If they are involved in an accident they are more likely to be injured If injured, they are more likely to die.

Older people have a lower than expected involvement in road accidents, but a higher than expected rate of deaths in road accidents.

This happens because the proportion of road accident casualties who die rises with increasing age

We can normalise with respect to a particular age, say

Effect of gender

Car occupants

Trends over time

Data for car drivers show the effect of improved occupant protection

Implications for car driver safety

The curve for slight injuries is our best measure of accident involvement The increase in fatalities for older drivers is almost wholly due to fragility

The increase with age in fatal and serious car driver casualty rates is due to fragility, not to greater accident involvement

We need to be more aware of fragility when analysing casualty statistics