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Elderly pedestrians are at greater risk of being struck by a car even when they're on a marked crossing. Is there nowhere that it's safe to be legless these days? In revenge of the motorist, the NRMA in NSW has come out and said that drunk pedestrians are their own worst enemies and sometimes even kill innocent drivers. But there is another group of pedestrians who are at risk of being struck down -but sober- and that's the elderly. One theory of traffic management is that if you mark out a crossing place for pedestrians then you make things much safer. Makes sense doesn't it? Nope! A study in the United States has found that elderly pedestrian collisions with motor vehicles are over twice as likely to occur on marked crosswalks than just a common or garden stretch of street. And the cross walks that caused almost all of this excess risk were those which didn't have traffic lights or stop signs. The figures allowed for traffic flow, time of day and numbers of pedestrians out and about. More research is needed to be sure of these findings but if they're real, the reasons are a combination of a false sense of security and disdain of some drivers for older pedestrians - can you believe it? - which leads to carelessness.
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