The University of Georgetown has carried out research into road traffic accidents involving pedestrians who use wheelchairs. The findings reveal a shocking discrepancy in  the safety of wheelchair users compared with other pedestrians.

30% to be exact. You are 30% more likely to be killed in a road traffic collision if you are a wheelchair user.

This is according to the findings published on the website BMJ Open.

The conclusions of the report indicate that “persons who use wheelchairs experience substantial pedestrian mortality disparities calling for behavioural and built environment interventions”.

The reasons given for this disturbing statistic include things like:

• Lack of provisions for safely crossing roads. i.e. no crossing signal or pedestrian crossings available. (Note: this research is specific to the USA)
• Reckless driving. People taking corners too fast, and not giving the right of way
• Scarily, in 76.4% of cases no crash avoidance manoeuvers were detected; no breaking or swerving.

John Kraemer is an epidemiologist and lawyer at Georgetown University and one of the authors of the paper. Of the findings of the research he says “this gets back to basic city design: How do we design places in ways that make it safe for pedestrians to use them? What we really don’t want is [for] a person who's using a wheelchair or has a disability to choose between not being able to access their community or having to do it in a dangerous way.”

What do you think of the findings? Are you surprised? Why do you think wheelchair users are more at risk from traffic? What measures do would help prevent so many tragedies?

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