A 72-year-old struck at 25 miles per hour in a marked crosswalk is far more likely to suffer life-threatening or fatal injuries than a 30-year-old hit by the same vehicle at the same speed. Trauma surgeons keep flagging this pattern, and the crash counts do not capture it cleanly. Older pedestrians are dying at rates their exposure alone doesn't predict, even though they aren't being struck dramatically more often than anyone else.
The disconnect matters because the fix goes well beyond "look both ways." It runs from the second a bumper makes contact through the weeks that follow in a hospital bed.
