In this section, we look at the pedestrians and vehicles involved in fatal collisions in the low speed range.
The gender and age group of the victims are broken down in Figs. 13 and 14, respectively, by speed range.
From this, it is revealed that a high proportion of the pedestrians killed in low-speed collisions comprise females, small children and seniors compared with the medium/high speed range.
For more detailed analysis, the number of fatal collisions is presented together with the corresponding percentage, by pedestrian age group, for both males and females, in Figs. 15, 16 and 17 for the speed ranges of up to 10 km/h,
11−20 km/h, and the medium/high speed range, respectively. What is easily noticeable from these figures is the outstandingly high contribution of elderly females, particularly in collisions in the low speed range.
Females over 65 years old account for around half in all three speed ranges. Figures 18, 19 and 20 show the fatal accident rates in the same way. Here, a high fatal accident rate is observed for small children 5 years old or younger for the speed range of up to 10 km/h, comparable to that of seniors over 75. Looking at the proportion of victims belonging to a particular age group, by collision speed, as shown in Fig. 21, about 50% of the fatal collisions involving small children of 5 or younger happened in the low speed range, suggesting that low-speed collisions are highly dangerous for small children.
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The types of vehicles involved are shown in Fig. 22 in percentage terms, by collision speed. While standard- and mini-sized vehicles play a major role in the medium/high speed range, large-sized vehicles also account for a relatively large part in the low speed range. In addition, box-shaped vehicles (i.e., those without a bonnet in the front) caused more fatalities than those with a bonnet. Figure 23 shows the fatal accident rate for each vehicle type indexed to that of the standard-sized car with a bonnet in the front (= 1), for the three speed ranges. For all the speed ranges, the one presenting the highest index is the large-sized vehicle, followed by the standard-sized box-shaped vehicle and the mini-sized box-shaped vehicle, all having indices greater than 1. Furthermore, the index of the large-sized vehicle for the medium/high speed range is 2.3, but it rises sharply to more than 15 for the low speed range, indicating that collisions in the low speed range carry a particularly high risk of death. We can point out a similar tendency for the box-shaped vehicle, presumably because of its front shape (i.e., without a bonnet in the front) and relatively long distance from the ground to the lower end of the vehicle body, which could result in more frequent occurrence of a pedestrian being knocked down, dragged under the vehicle body, and/or being run over.
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