Accessibility Assessment of Elderly Groups to Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Rural Areas

Rural areas have larger proportions of fatal crashes compared to urban areas. For instance, in 2020,1.84 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled occurred in rural areas compared to 1.08 in urban areas. The elderly population is overrepresented in traffic fatalities. This over-representation of the older population in fatal and severe injury crashes compared to younger adults may be due, in part, to an age-related diminished ability to select gaps in oncoming traffic. Moreover, increased fragility with age may exacerbate injury severity. It is thus imperative to ensure when older adults are involved in a crash, they have immediate access to post-crash care, i.e., emergency first responders need to quickly locate them, stabilize their injury, and transport them to medical facilities. Notably, post-crash care is one of the five components of the safe system approach adopted by the USDOT to eliminate fatal and severe crashes. This research has two main objectives; first, the accessibility of rural disadvantaged populations, particularly aging residents, to emergency medical services (EMS) and identifying critical locations, and second, to evaluate the post-crash care accessibility of the aging population in the rural area. Understanding the critical locations in rural areas with low accessibility to EMS will provide valuable information that can address the growing challenges associated with the accessibility of disadvantaged populations in rural communities. This research project will identify critical problems and propose innovative solutions to address accessibility, particularly focusing on post-crash care as one of the US DOT priorities and goals regarding transportation equity. The ultimate output will be the visual perception and cognition assistance system framework and a baseline model that is in line with the literature review and that provides the summary and state-of-the-art and other metrics that verify the vulnerability of elderly drivers in rural areas. The project will inform transportation planners and policymakers regarding the desired technologies that will lead to enhanced safety of elderly drivers and increased mobility of seniors in rural areas. The research findings will support the USDOT strategic goals of transportation equity