Things that go bump in the night: adult pedestrians in the night time economy

This report, launched at the 2014 National Road Safety Conference, looks in detail at the ‘emerging issue’ of the number of adult pedestrian casualties which occur during night-time hours.

The research, carried out by Road Safety Analysis on behalf of Road Safety GB, analyses the 30,000 adult pedestrians who were injured in road collisions between 6.00pm and 6.00am during the period 2009-2013.

While there has been a 48% reduction in the number of child pedestrian injuries in the last 10 years, at 22% the progress in reducing the number of adult pedestrians has been much slower – and as a proportion of all casualties, the number of adults injured while walking continues to rise year on year.

The analysis found that males are at greater risk of being injured as a pedestrian at night; that casualties often come from similar types of community (often areas of deprivation); and that their actions often contributed to the collision through alcohol impairment, wearing dark clothing and/or dangerous actions in the carriageway.

The report also found that adult pedestrians are most at risk at weekends, between 6pm and 11pm, and when they are in the 16-34 years age range.

Geographically, London, Wales, Scotland and the North-East of England are hotspots for adult pedestrian collisions.

The report concludes that developing effective education campaigns that will work with this group of people will prove difficult due to low perceptions of risk, message retention and impairment.

It also says that engineering through lower speeds and separation offer the best opportunity to reduce risk and exposure, and appropriate measures should be considered wherever the night time economy has its greatest presence.