Looking behaviour

Like other pedestrian accident victims, and as we have noted already, a large proportion of older pedestrians say they did not see the vehicle that hit them (Sheppard and Pattinson, 1986). It is possible that this results from deficits in

looking behaviour. Older people’s capacity to look may be compromised by physical problems turning their head (Isler et al., 1997), by impaired vision (section 2.1), and by declining visual attention skills (section 2.3). It is difficult to measure these aspects of looking behaviour directly, and studies have tended to use the number of head turns pedestrians make as an indication.

Some studies have reported differences in older people’s looking behaviour. Perhaps the most interesting analysis was made by Wilson and Grayson (1980). They

observed younger and older adults crossing roads at three sites in the UK. These were urban roads, and about 10,000 crossings were recorded. They reported that older pedestrians made a smaller proportion of their head movements while approaching the kerb, and speculated that younger pedestrians, who were also less likely to pause at the kerb, were better able to assess the traffic on the move. There was, however, a significant tendency for the absolute number of head movements to increase with age, both before and during crossing. The mean total number of head movements was 6.5 for the oldest, 80 years old, and 5.5 for the youngest, 18 years old (data estimated from Wilson and Grayson, Figure 5). They also found that the proportion of pedestrians looking both ways increased with age (to 69% of those over 70). Although we have no data on what older people detect when they look at traffic, the available information implies that they do look at traffic at least as much as younger people.

To put this in context, slightly larger differences were found in the overall average number of head movements between the three crossing sites where data were recorded than were found between the youngest and oldest pedestrians. Wilson and Grayson emphasised that although they did find differences between older and younger pedestrians, the differences tended to be small.

Harrell (1996) recorded the looking behaviour of pedestrians at four signal-

controlled crossings at intersections in Edmonton, Canada. Looking was defined as a head movement made at the moment the signal to cross came on. This may slightly bias age comparisons if older people are more likely to turn their head to make a given check (cf. section 2). Harrell found that, in general, pedestrians judged to be over 51 years, the oldest group defined, looked 50% of the time. That was more than young adults but very similar to those aged 31–51 years (49%). People, particularly older people, tended to look more when streets were less busy, probably in part because traffic flowing more freely would be moving faster. There was also an overall tendency to look more when there were fewer other pedestrians at low or medium traffic volumes. However, for over 51s this tendency was not significant at medium traffic volumes, although the size of the difference was large (87.5% looking with low numbers of other pedestrians versus 40%), and the direction was actually reversed at low traffic volumes. Harrell concluded that older people were not less safe than younger adults when checking traffic at a signal-controlled intersection crossing. Interestingly, he found that although men overall checked more often than women (47.1% versus 40.9%) women over 51 years tended to check more than older men at medium and high traffic volumes.

An earlier study by Harrell (1991b) using similar methods and the same criterion for looking, also found that 50% of older pedestrians (over 50 years) looked, and 48.9% of 31–51 year olds. It is perhaps surprising that the figures agree so closely, given that at least half the observations in the later paper were at different locations. Data

for both studies were gathered in 1987, but data for the 1996 paper were also gathered in 1986. Sample size was good in both cases, with 1,489 usable

observations in the 1991 paper, and 1,662 in the 1996 paper. Harrell (1991b) found more checking by over 50s when traffic volumes were at low or medium levels, but the difference was only large at medium traffic volumes. In treacherous conditions, when roads were snow covered, women increased looking but men did not, and this effect was strongest for older women who checked 48.7% of the time in dry

conditions, but 83.3% of the time in snow. Older men actually decreased their looking when there was snow, down to 20% from 47.9% in the dry. However, although the overall gender interaction with weather was significant, these pairwise comparisons were not. Harrell suggested that older women may be especially concerned about the hazard of slipping.

Job et al. (1998) observed pedestrians crossing at two signal-controlled intersections in Sydney that had had high numbers of pedestrian accidents in the past. Older people were more likely than younger people to not look at traffic at all when crossing (28.8% versus 18.5% at one site, 44.1% versus 40.2% at the other). The difference between older and younger people was small compared to the difference between sites and, as Job et al. noted, no information was recorded on whether they looked before beginning to walk. It could be that older people tend to place more faith in the ‘system’, and believe that once they are on a crossing, the crossing will protect them. On the other hand, they may have judged accurately that they

happened not to need to check on those particular crossing occasions. At one site, a larger percentage of older people looked three or more times than did not look at all. At the site where looking was less frequent, mean walking speeds for older people were 13% slower, indicating less concern about traffic (see section 2.3.1 above). Older people were also more likely to begin walking during the ‘green’ phase. A further possibility is that there are distinct subgroups of older pedestrians with different patterns of looking behaviour. Some older people crossed away from the crossing or at different phases of the signal, and the data on looking behaviour were not broken down by these categories.

Most studies indicate that the looking behaviour of younger and older pedestrians is rather similar. Older people look slightly more than younger people, and their looking behaviour appears to be sensitive to environmental conditions in ways that are prudent. However, one study has found that at some busy signal-controlled crossings, many older people do not look at all. Differences between older and younger people are small compared to differences between locations.