1. THE FRAGILITY OF OLDER ROAD USERS IN BRITAIN Kit Mitchell

2. FRAGILITY As people grow older, they become more physically fragile If they are involved in an accident they are more likely to be injured If injured, they are more likely to die.

3. Older people have a lower than expected involvement in road accidents, but a higher than expected rate of deaths in road accidents.

5. This happens because the proportion of road accident casualties who die rises with increasing age

7. We can normalise with respect to a particular age, say 30 - 39

9. Effect of gender

12. Car occupants

15. Trends over time

18. Data for car drivers show the effect of improved occupant protection

21. Implications for car driver safety

22. The curve for slight injuries is our best measure of accident involvement The increase in fatalities for older drivers is almost wholly due to fragility

28. The increase with age in fatal and serious car driver casualty rates is due to fragility, not to greater accident involvement

29. We need to be more aware of fragility when analysing casualty statistics