Group Session 5: Mobility
Mobility is essential for older people to live independently
and to be self sufficient. Without mobility, they cannot access shops,
medical facilities, leisure or other activities. For many older people a
loss of day to day outdoor mobility can trigger a decline in both physical
and mental health and wellbeing. Older people can face mobility problems
as pedestrians, as public transport users and as motorists.
If older people are to travel safely and with confidence, we need to
consider every stage of a journey and to tackle the barriers to mobility
created by society and the environment in which we live as well as the
personal and individual barriers created by the ageing process.
Technology has a major part to play in maximising the potential for an
older person to continue to be independently mobile. However, technology
can also exclude and alienate older people.
This session will look at the use of technology in the street
environment and in public transport and how this impacts on the ageing
society and the ability and confidence of older people to continue to
travel independently. It will also look at the part that technology plays
in enabling older people as individuals to prolong their personal mobility
as drivers.
Topics for discussion
- How can technology help to create a pedestrian environment in which
an ageing population feel safe and confident?
- What are the main threats and challenges faced by older
pedestrians?
- Can technology be applied to reduce those threats and challenges?
- Can technology restore confidence in older pedestrians?
- What can technology do to address the local mobility needs of the
growing number of older people with some form of dementia?
- How can information and communication technology be applied to make
public transport use easier for an ageing society?
- What can be done to persuade a generation of older car drivers to
become public transport users, perhaps for the first time?
- How can technology be applied to take the stress out of using
public transport?
- What are the potential physical barriers to older people using
public transport? How can these be overcome?
- Should we focus on adapting public transport to meet the needs of
an ageing population or on providing alternative door to door
services?
- What can technology do to prolong safe and confident driving by
older individuals?
- Can technology compensate safely for slower reactions, reduced
night vision and other common effects of ageing?
- How can we ensure that technology does not introduce further
complications into the already stressful driving task?
- Can technology be used to determine when an older individual is no
longer safe to continue driving?
- Is it better to use technology to bring services to older people at
home so reducing their need to go out?
- What are the physical and psychological impacts of reduced
mobility?
- What are the health and welfare costs and benefits of enabling an
older person to continue to travel to healthcare appointments rather
than bringing healthcare into the home?
- Do these outweigh the risks of allowing an older person to
continue to drive if they have no other means of retaining their
independence?
|
