Injuries to older users of public transport - a neglected problem

Objective: How are older people injured when using buses and what are the potential design solutions for injury mitigation? Methods: Bus incident data for older 60+ years passengers was sourced from UK national linked crash and hospital data (1016 cases).These data were analysed to examine passenger location, injury severity, injury type and causation on buses in the UK using descriptive statistics and Chi 2 statistic with significance set at p0.05. Results: A total of 4532 linked records were received for bus/coach records of which 1016 fitted the analysis criteria. Most incidents in the linked dataset were non-collisions (62%) resulting in recorded injuries in those aged 60+ years, of which 46% were ‘slight’ and 54% ‘serious’ - no fatalities were evident in the data. Injury distribution differed significantly depending on passenger location, with head and chest injuries occurring mainly whilst seated, lower extremity injuries on alighting and boarding and trunk and lower back injuries on standing (Chi 2 109.26 df 12 p<0.05). Conclusions: Overall the data analysed served two purposes. The first highlights the fact that no comprehensive data exists at the UK national level to record injuries on buses as the current available information only captures those passengers admitted to hospital. Secondly the study identified very real differences in injury patterns, severity and ageing populations which could be used to formulate injury prevention design strategies.