Many elderly people have mobility or activity restrictions. The architectural and social environment is up to now not particularly orientated towards the needs of this group. The unsatisfactory situation of senior citizens in traffic lead to the idea, to initiate a research project. The project "Safeguarding the mobility of elderly people in traffic" was commissioned by the Eugen-Otto-Butz-Stiftung, a foundation spending money in projects concerned with traffic safety and mobility education. The project was processed by SVPT together with NeumannConsult (Muenster), a bureau concerned with barrier-free traffic design and Research Centre of Eugen-Otto-Butz- Foundation at Institute ASER e.V., Wuppertal. The aim of the survey was to create guidelines for infrastructure design to enable senior citizens a secure and independent mobility as long as possible. The main studies were processed in three selected cities in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The selection of these cities was based on various criteria, as for example city size, structure, centrality as well as percentage of people older than 65 and modal split. In addition, the extent to which the requirements of the elderly people are taken into account at the planning and design of road traffic facilities up to now should be considered. For this purpose the most important German regulations for the figuration of traffic facilities were analyzed in respect to details concerning the design appropriate for elderly and mobility-restricted people. For the covering abstract see ITRD E138091. This paper is available from http://www.ictct.org/workshops/07-Beijing/21Boenke5563.pdf.
Abstract