Main Content
Highlights
Preparing more protection for ageing boomers
Japan's rapidly ageing population is radically changing the country's road safety priorities to the point where the risks created by senior motorists and senior pedestrians are now topping its list of major safety problems.
While other countries like Australia usually view speeding, drink driving and not wearing seatbelts as their biggest threat to road safety, Japan with the world's oldest population, now finds that the only way it can hope to meet future targets for cutting the local road toll is by doing more to protect the elderly.
The stark contrast between Japan and the rest of the world has just been revealed in a major report published jointly by the OECD and European Conference of Ministers of Transport.
The report compares the road safety performance of 38 countries - plus Victoria and Western Australia, making it a unique document for researchers in the two States seeking comparative international data.
Japan's experience with ageing road users - plus the measures it is developing to protect them - could well turn it into a test bed for new approaches as other countries look to solving similar problems.
As this issue of TransScan shows, the advent of ageing Baby Boomers is generating considerable international research. Japanese transport authorities have told the OECD the government has now adopted comprehensive traffic safety measures for the elderly as part of the country's "transition to the full scale of ageing society".
It is redesigning traffic areas to make them safer for elderly users - and is building designated "safe walking areas" in "incident prone" residential and commercial districts.
There is also a major re-education program being introduced for people who live or work in incident prone districts. "Local residents/workers are called upon to attend safety workshops and high-risk site inspections, and a variety of community-approved measures are implemented to prevent casualty-inflicting accidents."
Japanese traffic authorities have also introduced home visits to offer older people face-to-face road safety tips.
Last year Japan recorded 7931 road fatalities - producing a rate of 6.2 per 100,000 inhabitants. That puts it in 6th place internationally for the lowest fatality rate. By the same measure Australia comes 13th.
In OECD data collection, Australia and Japan are linked. Member nations of the OECD's Asia/Pacific region are Australia, Japan, Korea and New Zealand.
In the OECD's league table, Asia-Pacific is second behind Western Europe in achieving the greatest reduction in road fatalities between 1970 and 2004. Europe cut its figure by 59% while Asia-Pacific achieved a 43% reduction.
The scan also showed:
Risky purchase
Light cars may save on petrol - but they don't save on lives, not according to the latest checklist developed by Monash University's Accident Research Centre. The centre's review of Australia's cars finds that no light cars have a crashworthiness better than average and of 37 light cars it examined, more than half scored the worst possible rating. "Buyers need to think very carefully about a purchase in this class, especially young drivers who have high crash risk and older drivers who are more susceptible to injury," says Dr Stuart Newstead who led the investigation. The centre gives top marks for safety to Subaru Foresters built between 1997 and 2002. Copies of the research report are available in PDF format from the Monash University's Accident Research Centre website.
Planning for older drivers
Planners have long realised that aging Baby Boomers will eventually lead to an increase in the numbers of elderly drivers involved in car crashes. In fact the Australian Transport Safety Bureau in 2003 urged planning and safety authorities to make a start on changing road design so that more elderly-friendly layouts could reduced the expected toll. Now US researchers led by the University of Virginia have been investigating similar trends in America and have listed their own set of measures that could reduce what is expected to be a significantly higher death rate. Included in the US analysis is a list of the types of injuries hospital emergency departments will be expected to deal with. For example, drivers over the aged of 65 are more likely than 16-33 year olds to die of chest injuries. (47.3% vs. 24%). In response, the researchers are not only calling for changes to road design and signage but also more effort to find possible technological solutions - for example the development of new seatbelts that will limit the force of a crash on a driver's body.
Rural drinking
New strategies will be necessary to deter people who drink heavily - and drive - in Australia's rural areas. A report by Monash University's Accident Research Centre has found drink-drivers, at least in country Victoria, are "very successful" in avoiding random breath tests. "Many rural hotel patrons actively avoid (RBT) enforcement activities if possible, regardless of their self-reported alcohol consumption," says the centre. "Many, especially patrons defined as high-risk, believe others do the same." It seems that if any patrons spot a RBT near the pub, they quickly pass on the information to their drinking mates - and no one drives near it. In an RBT review, "Strategic Principles of Drink-Driving Enforcement", the centre says to catch such high-risk drink drivers enforcement authorities will need to consider alternative strategies.
Child restraints
Britain is imposing tougher laws on the use of seatbelts starting with how children are restrained. They require all children between the ages of 3 and 12 to use the correct restraint for their age and size - including booster seats if they are below 135cms tall and therefore need the extra height to fit into an adult belt. From May 2009, it will also be illegal in the UK for drivers to carry more passengers than their vehicle has seatbelts. Details of the legislation are available at the British Department for Transport website. Britain's experience with children being strapped into cars with inappropriate safety belts is also being reflected by Australian research. A research team from the Monash University Accident Research Centre has found that more than half Australian children between the age of four and 11 travel in vehicles with inappropriate restraints. It is urging State governments to introduce more definitive laws on seatbelts for older children.
Novice drivers
Graduated licensing laws can reduce fatality rates among young novice drivers by as much as 20%, according to a study of graduated programs in 36 US States. While all the programs differ, researchers from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that provided the programs included at least five key components, they were effective in reducing risks. The components were identified and chosen for analysis by virtue of the fact that seven of them were common to the programs of all 36 States. The components are:
- A minimum age of 15 1/2 for obtaining a learner permit;
- A waiting period after obtaining a learner's permit of at least 3 months before applying for an intermediate license;
- A minimum of 30 hours of supervised driving;
- Minimum age of at least 16 years for obtaining an intermediate state license;
- Minimum age of at least 17 years for full licensing;
- A night time driving restriction; and
- A restriction on carrying passengers.
The researchers compared States with five program components with seven States that had no graduated licensing schemes. States that had the five components had 18% fewer fatal crashes involving 16-year-old drivers. States with six or seven components had a 21% reduction. Currently in the US about 1000 16-year-old drivers are killed on the roads each year.
Whiplash explained?
Are whiplash injuries caused by victims being startled? Researchers in Canada believe so. Their findings, just published in the Journal of Physiology suggest that startled reflexes elicited by unexpected loud sounds - like a vehicle smashing into the back of another - are what really causes the problem. For a long time doctors have been puzzled by the fact that many low-speed rear-end collisions seem to cause more neck damage than is really explained by the strength of the impact. The researchers, from the University of British Columbia, now hope the discovery will lead to new ways of prevention and management.
