Abstract

As ageing population is growing faster, traffic accidents involving elderly drivers become a serious social problem in South Korea. The present study aims to examine the impact of environmental characteristics on the injury severity of accidents involving elderly drivers in Seoul, South Korea. To achieve the purpose, the study divided elderly drivers into the following two groups: young-elderly drivers aged 65–69 years and middle- and old-aged drivers over 69 years old. The study also analysed non-elderly drivers aged 30 to 64 years as the comparative group. The study used the generalised ordered logit model, which is widely used to analyse data with ordinal scales. The findings from the study draw attention to the fact that (1) the characteristics of traffic accidents by injury severity considerably differed by age group. (2) risk of accident severity involving elderly drivers increase in areas with heavy traffic volumes and facilities that may create a complex driving condition to elderly drivers, (3) since elderly drivers tend to require longer response time with impaired vision under complex driving environment, it increased the risk of traffic accidents that older drivers face a higher risk of fatal injuries than younger counterparts. Thus, in order to reduce traffic accidents involving elderly drivers, the traffic safety policies should take environmental characteristics as well as the human factor concerning elderly drivers’ difficulties because of ageing and longer cognitive response time. This study contributes to the research in traffic accidents involving elderly drivers in that not only the accident characteristics (human factors, road condition, weather), mostly used for traffic accident analysis, but also environmental factors concerning the urban characteristics of Seoul Metropolitan City were analysed to compare the risk of traffic accidents and accident severity by age groups.

摘要

随着人口老龄化的加快，涉及老年司机的交通事故成为韩国严重的社会问题。本研究旨在研究环境特征对韩国首尔老年司机事故伤害严重程度的影响。为了达到这一目的，研究将老年司机分为以下两组：65-69岁的年轻老年司机和69岁以上的中老年司机。该研究还分析了 30 至 64 岁的非老年司机作为对照组。该研究使用了广义有序 logit 模型，该模型广泛用于分析具有序数尺度的数据。研究结果提请注意以下事实：（1）按伤害严重程度划分的交通事故特征因年龄组而异。(2) 在交通量大的地区和设施可能会给老年司机带来复杂的驾驶条件，老年司机的事故严重风险增加， (3) 由于老年司机在复杂的驾驶环境下视力受损往往需要更长的响应时间，它增加了交通事故的风险，即老年司机比年轻司机面临更高的致命伤害风险。因此，为了减少涉及老年司机的交通事故，交通安全政策应考虑环境特点以及老年司机因老龄化和较长的认知反应时间而困难的人为因素。这项研究有助于研究涉及老年驾驶员的交通事故，因为不仅事故特征（人为因素、道路状况、