ILC-UK @ BSG – Older People’s Transport Needs: Issues of Design and Access
The British Society of Gerontology conference, held this week at Brunel University, featured several papers on transport needs – particularly the role of the car in older people’s well-being.
Graham Parkhurst and Ian Shergold of the Centre for Transport and Society at the University of West England considered the existence and function of ‘mobility capital’. Their premise was that mobility is required to translate social resources into actual connectivity with neighbourhoods and communities.
Their research studied six rural areas in South Wales and South-West England, with population density ranging from remote to near-urban. They found that 83% are as involved in their local community as they would like to be – although this dropped to 72% for those without car access.
Perhaps Parkhurst and Shergold’s most important finding is that while most people agreed that transport is not as a barrier to community involvement, only a third of people without access to a car concurred.
Carlessness is rare, and it does seem that mobility capital is high among most older people, even in rural areas. But clearly there are people for whom a lack of mobility can lead to social exclusion – and the chief cause is often lack of access to a car.
Charles Musselwhite, also of the Centre for Transport and Society, turned attention to car design. Musselwhite surveyed the main design barriers to driving for older people. He listed external distractions, maintaining speed, and glare from oncoming headlights.
Yet his research discovered that older people are sceptical of the most technologically sophisticated design solutions. Whereas younger people are comfortable with allowing technology to replace certain physical and cognitive functions, older people tend to want to retain a sense of control.
The moral of the story is perhaps the importance of inclusive design in the development of products and services addressing population ageing. Inclusive design was a major theme of a paper by Hua Dong of Brunel University, based on research undertaken with Christopher Nicola of Camden Council. The research focused, however, on cycling rather than driving among older people.
Dong argued that the main barriers to cycling for older people are a lack of confidence, an inability to retain balance, and security concerns. Dong and Nicola’s study used ethnographic techniques to shape the development of design solutions. While most solutions focused on making cycling less physically arduous, among the most innovative was one that instead focused on the main cause of cycling accidents on UK roads – heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). ‘Cycle sense’ would alert HGV drivers by tactile means (things like a vibrating seat) to the proximity of cyclists. Not only would this minimise one of the main concerns of older cyclists, it would also produce safer HGV drivers.
Craig Berry