Pedestrian crossings in the UK and US require people to walk at 1.2 m/s to cross the road in time; however a large proportion of older people do not walk this fast, potentially discouraging walking or putting older people at risk of injury. We use longitudinal data to investigate changes in walking speed, and ability to cross the road in time, at older ages. 31,015 walking speed measurements we...

This study measures pedestrian walking speeds in New Zealand to estimate the influences of mean walking speeds as these concern urban planning and pedestrian facility design. Research was conducted using field observations of walking speeds under different conditions: gradient and urban/rural townships. The data show complex interrelationships between environment, personal characteristics of pe...

The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of Feldenkrais Method balance classes on balance and mobility in older adults. This was a prospective non-randomized controlled study with pre/post measures. The setting for this study was the general community. A convenience sample of 26 community-dwelling older adults (median age 75 years) attending Feldenkrais Method balance classes ...

It has previously been shown that a bipedal model consisting of a point mass supported by spring limbs can be tuned to simulate periodic human walking. In this study, we incorporated roller feet into the spring-mass model and evaluated the effect of roller radius, impact angle, and limb stiffness on spatiotemporal gait characteristics, ground reactions, and center-of-pressure excursions. We als...

Before succumbing to slower speeds, older adults may walk with a diminished push-off to prioritize stability over mobility. However, direct evidence for trade-offs between push-off intensity and balance control in human walking, independent of changes in speed, has remained elusive. As a critical first step, we conducted two experiments to investigate: (i) the independent effects of walking spe...

Pedometers are used in many studies because physical activities can be simply assessed using them. In addition to the spring-levered type, piezo-electric pedometers have recently been used. However, their accuracy in children has not been investigated in previous studies. In this study, we investigated the accuracy of spring-levered pedometer and piezo-electric pedometer step counts in comparis...

Obesity has been related to postural instability during static standing. It remains unknown how obesity influences stability during dynamic movements like gait. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the effects of obesity on dynamic gait stability control in young adults during gait. Forty-four young adults (21 normal-weight and 23 obese) participated in this study. Participants walk...

Walking speed was timed for male and female pedestrians on a public sidewalk with fast, slow, or no music playing in the background (n = 20 per condition). Pedestrians in the fast music condition walked more rapidly than those in the other two conditions. Slow music did not reduce walking speed, relative to the no music condition. Walking speed did not differ by gender in any of the three condi...

People frequently analyze the actions of other people for the purpose of action coordination. To understand whether such self-relative action perception differs from other-relative action perception, the authors had observers either compare their own walking speed with that of a point-light walker or compare the walking speeds of 2 point-light walkers. In Experiment 1, observers walked, bicycle...

This study investigated the temporal characteristics of gait initiation and gait termination. Ten nondisabled adult volunteers and ten people with unilateral transtibial limb loss performed starting and stopping for slow, normal, and fast walking speeds. We used kinematic and anthropomorphic data to determine the body center of mass (BCOM) position of each subject. The BCOM acceleration was der...