抄録
Traffic accidents causing pedestrians fatalities accounted for 37% of all traffic accidents in 2011. Especially, elderly pedestrians have been very often involved in traffic accidents (67%), for which countermeasures have to be taken. In order to investigate situations under which elderly pedestrians crossing roads could be involved in traffic accidents, experiments to measure the timing of when elderly pedestrians judged to cross roads while a vehicle was moving to approach them, were conducted in the daytime, evening and nighttime. It was analyzed how an elderly pedestrian's judgment to cross a road could be affected by the variety of a vehicle velocity or a distance between a pedestrian and a moving vehicle. When pedestrians tried to cross the road from the right hand side, the distances judged by the elderly were shorter than those by the younger at higher vehicle travel speeds (40 km/h or more) at daytime. On the other hand, the pedestrians tried to cross the road from the right hand side, the distances judged by the elderly tended to become similar to those by the younger at higher vehicle travel speeds at nighttime under the condition of the high beam. Thus, we could see the effectiveness of vehicle head lamps for elderly pedestrians to recognize an approaching vehicle and judge to cross the road.
