2015 Volume 62 Issue 5 Pages 251-258
Objectives This study investigated 1) the incidence of bicycle-related accidents and subsequent injuries and 2) the number of injuries (accidents) reported to the police (i.e., examining the number of potential accidents) among community-dwelling Japanese older adults, after examining the percentage of those who were regular cyclists.
Methods Based on local resident registration, we mailed questionnaires to 7083 community-dwelling older adults. The questionnaire included questions about the incidence of bicycle-related accidents and subsequent injury within a year, the degree of injury and presence or absence of reporting that injury (bicycle-related accident) to the police. For the bicycle-related accident, we asked regarding both riding and pedestrian accidents (i.e., accidents caused by a bicycle when walking).
Results Excluding the blank responses (n=3539, 50.0%), the targets for analysis were 3098 older adults in riding accidents and 2861 older adults in pedestrian accidents. The results showed that 63.0% of older adults (n=1953) routinely rode a bicycle. Among them, 9.4% (n=184) experienced riding accidents, and 3.4% (n=98) experienced pedestrian accidents caused by a bicycle. For the riding accidents, 76.1% (n=140) had some injuries, and for the pedestrian accidents, 55.1% (n=54) had some injuries. Furthermore, in 70.2% (n=59) and 76.9% (n=20) of riding and pedestrian accidents, respectively, those who went to the hospital for treatment of their injury (i.e., injury requiring treatment) did not report the accident to the police.
Conclusion The present study revealed that there are many potential bicycle-related accidents in older adults. This suggests that there may be a large gap in the national survey data between reported bicycle-related accidents and the actual number of incidents in older adults.
