The Role of Cognitive, Perceptual, and Motor Abilities in Elderly Pedestrians' Street-Crossing Decisions
In spite of improvements in infrastructure design, road crossing remains a highly difficult task for elderly pedestrians. Psychological research has highlighted their difficulties in selecting safe gaps and adopting sufficient safety margins, especially in complex traffic situations. More specifically, we have observed previously that the speed of the approaching vehicles strongly affected the elderly peoples' crossing decisions: whereas younger pedestrians chose constant time gaps independently of speed, elderly people were found to accept shorter and shorter time gaps as speed increased, putting them at a higher risk at high speeds.The objective of the present study was to better understand the underlying age-related changes that lead to these behaviours, with a special focus on perceptual abilities.
