RESUMEN

INTRODUCTION: Road traffic crashes involving vertical curbs are commonly reported to occur on highways and expressways in India. We found a gap in terms of systematically assessing the evidence of the impact of curbs on road safety outcomes in the real world. METHOD: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the impact of curbs on the risk of road traffic injuries. We used keywords in a database of records prepared by an earlier evidence gap map (EGM). The EGM used a comprehensive search strategy including 6 academic database, 17 organizational websites, hand searching, contacting experts and back referencing. RESULTS: We found 4 studies that evaluated impact of a curbed median or a curbed shoulder. We found that the presence of a curb on a median increases the risk for all crashes, all single-vehicle crashes, all median-related crashes and median-related injury crashes. The data also indicate that the severity of accidents reduces for curbs on median while it increases for curbs on shoulder, though the latter effect is not statistically significant. All the epidemiological studies were conducted on rural highways and did not report effects for different traffic speeds or vehicle types. However, our review of crash tests and simulation studies indicates that the impact of a curb design may be highly sensitive to speed and vehicle types. CONCLUSIONS: The safety impacts of a curb depend on the context of the road. In an urban road, a curb should ensure safety of pedestrians from an errant vehicle. On high-speed rural roads, curbs should be avoided and treatments should facilitate safe departure of the vehicle from the roadway.

Asunto(s)

Accidentes de Tránsito , Heridas y Lesiones , Simulación por Computador , Bases de Datos Factuales , Humanos , Población Rural , Seguridad , Heridas y Lesiones/epidemiología

RESUMEN

The use of walking aids is prevalent among older people and people with mobility impairment. Rollators are designed to support outdoor mobility and require the user to negotiate curbs and slopes in the urban environment. Despite the prevalence of rollators, analysis of their use outside of controlled environments has received relatively little attention. This Letter reports on an initial study to characterise rollator movement. An inertial measurement unit (IMU) was used to measure the motion of the rollator and analytical approaches were developed to extract features characterising the rollator movement, properties of the surface and push events. The analytics were tested in two situations: first, a healthy participant used a rollator in a laboratory using a motion capture system to obtain ground truth. Second, the IMU was used to measure the movement of a rollator being used by a user with multiple sclerosis on a flat surface, cross-slope, up and down slopes and up and down a step. The results showed that surface inclination and distance travelled measured by the IMU have close approximation to the results from ground truth; therefore, demonstrating the potential for IMU-derived metrics to characterise rollator movement and user's pushing style in the outdoor environment.