According to the Singapore Police Force, in 2015 there were 230 jaywalking accidents resulting in death or injury, and a quarter of them were elderly pedestrians. Those above 60 years old made up more than half of the total number of pedestrian fatalities last year with 15 out of 22 cases.
So despite the dangers, why do the elderly continue to jaywalk? I believe many of them have difficulties in walking. To them, walking is tiring or painful, so they would rather take the risk and jaywalk than to go 50m to the traffic light, and another 50m back.
The other problem is, these elderly may not have the reflexes or ability to react when a car comes speeding towards them, such as running or jumping out of the way. So they account for a disproportionately high percentage of the fatalities.
Last but least, many of them go out to buy groceries, so it is not uncommon to see elderly people jaywalking and at the same time lugging heavy shopping trollies behind them.
So the best solution is to use mobility scooters. With a mobility scooter, going an extra 100m to get to the nearest pedestrian crossing becomes an effortless affair and is no longer painful or tiring. This greatly increases the safety of the elderly pedestrian. And mobility scooters can carry quite a lot of load and can help with the groceries.
The Phoenix HD 4-wheel scooter is a great scooter to use for grocery shopping. It is bigger and more spacious that most other small scooters and can, therefore, carry more groceries, but is at the same time compact enough to manoeuvre through tight spaces such as supermarkets.