TY - JOUR

T1 - Misjudging their own steps

T2 - why elderly people have trouble crossing the road

AU - Zivotofsky, Ari Z

AU - Eldror, Ehud

AU - Mandel, Roi

AU - Rosenbloom, Tova

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

N2 - OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to test whether elderly individuals underestimate the time that it will take them to cross a street by comparing estimated with actual road-crossing time.BACKGROUND: In many developed countries, elderly people are overrepresented among pedestrian fatalities from motor vehicle accidents. There is surely more than one contributing factor to this phenomenon, and many have been offered. We propose that one additional factor may be that although older people are consciously aware that they no longer walk at the same pace as they once did, they do not take this fact into consideration when planning a street crossing.METHOD: We compared the ability of young and old pedestrians to estimate the time that it will take them to cross a street, using both prospective and retrospective time estimation.RESULTS: A significant interaction was found between age group and crossing time. Among elderly participants, actual crossing times were significantly longer than both their precrossing estimation and their postcrossing estimation, which did not significantly differ from each other. In contrast, the undergraduate group's crossing times did not display a significant difference across measurements.CONCLUSION: This study implies that even if older pedestrians correctly evaluate the road situation, they may nonetheless endanger themselves by underestimating the time that it will take them to cross the street.We suggest that minimizing this effect could be accomplished by educating seniors to the fact that they are not as fast as they once were and that this fact needs to be factored in to street-crossing decisions.

AB - OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to test whether elderly individuals underestimate the time that it will take them to cross a street by comparing estimated with actual road-crossing time.BACKGROUND: In many developed countries, elderly people are overrepresented among pedestrian fatalities from motor vehicle accidents. There is surely more than one contributing factor to this phenomenon, and many have been offered. We propose that one additional factor may be that although older people are consciously aware that they no longer walk at the same pace as they once did, they do not take this fact into consideration when planning a street crossing.METHOD: We compared the ability of young and old pedestrians to estimate the time that it will take them to cross a street, using both prospective and retrospective time estimation.RESULTS: A significant interaction was found between age group and crossing time. Among elderly participants, actual crossing times were significantly longer than both their precrossing estimation and their postcrossing estimation, which did not significantly differ from each other. In contrast, the undergraduate group's crossing times did not display a significant difference across measurements.CONCLUSION: This study implies that even if older pedestrians correctly evaluate the road situation, they may nonetheless endanger themselves by underestimating the time that it will take them to cross the street.We suggest that minimizing this effect could be accomplished by educating seniors to the fact that they are not as fast as they once were and that this fact needs to be factored in to street-crossing decisions.

KW - Aged

KW - Automobiles

KW - Female

KW - Humans

KW - Judgment

KW - Male

KW - Task Performance and Analysis

KW - Walking

U2 - 10.1177/0018720812447945

DO - 10.1177/0018720812447945

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 22908683

VL - 54

SP - 600

EP - 607

JO - Human Factors

JF - Human Factors

SN - 0018-7208

IS - 4

ER -