The Effect of Traffic Complexity and Speed on Young and Elderly Pedestrians’ Street-Crossing Decisions

This experiment aimed at studying the effects of age, traffic complexity and speed of the approaching cars on the probability of a pedestrian to be involved in a crash. Fifty nine participants aged between 20-84 years took part in a street-crossing estimation task in a simulated road environment. The results showed an overall higher number of ‘collisions’ with increasing age. While the number of collisions did not vary according to traffic complexity and speed of the approaching cars in the young group, the older participants were more likely to make decisions that led to collisions when the traffic was approaching from two rather than one direction, and at a high speed. The findings were discussed in relation to the effects of age-related cognitive and perceptual limitation on difficulties in selecting safe gaps. The present results have implications for improving older pedestrians’ safety in terms of road design, speed reduction measures, and training opportunities