An age-based comparison of pedestrian crash involvement in Victoria, 1992-1996 : development of a matrix to combine crash characteristics and human operator capabilities to achieve focused countermeasures.

This paper examines the different types of pedestrian crashes with a view to determining which, if any, age groups were predisposed to be involved in particular crash types. A total of 8841 pedestrian involved casualty crashes in Victoria over the five-year period 1992 - 1996 were examined. Results indicate that older and younger pedestrians have a higher crash involvement rate and certain age groups tend to be predisposed to particular types of crashes. This paper takes a novel and somewhat exploratory approach at suggesting countermeasures by developing a matrix based on the interaction of the known crash characteristics of certain age groups and knowledge of the human operator's physical and psychological skills and limitations. This model may be useful in the application and development of highly focused pedestrian countermeasures. (A)