Prevention of slipping accidents of pedestrians : informing the pedestrians about adverse road conditions.

During the winter months, adverse weather conditions in Finland present a serious slip hazard for pedestrians, particularly the elderly who may often have little choice with respect to transport mode and who may be especially vulnerable to falls . This paper describes an investigation into the effectiveness of a warning service for pedestrians on road conditions given at the onset of adverse winter weather. In the study the accumulation days of slipping accidents in Helsinki area were investigated from the medical and insurance statistics available during the winter season 1999-2000. Those days were compared to days when the pedestrians were warned about extremely slippery conditions. Overall, the results suggested that the accuracy of the information service was rather good - two of the six accumulation days of slipping accidents were forecasted and warned accurately in the morning. In addition, three of the accumulation days of slipping accidents were forecasted and warned one day too early - in other words the warning should probably have been given the following morning as well. This might be due the fact that the slipperiness has been regional and only in few pedestrian and bicycle ways. As a summary, the hazardous weather conditions implicating the possibility of slippery pedestrian and bicycle ways are as follows; rain, sleet or snow, the temperature changing between plus and minus degrees during the day, fast clearing of the weather (clouds) and raining or snowing on top of wet or icy ground. In addition, the possible congruence between the road condition information to pedestrians or to drivers or the possible congruence between days of slipping or traffic accidents were studied. The results suggest that the accumulation days for accidents were different for pedestrians and for vehicles. Therefore also the warning information about adverse road conditions for pedestrians and for drivers were given on different days. Also these results suggested the overall conclusion, that separate road conditions information for pedestrian is justified. For the covering abstract see ITRD E136182.