Driving Assessment and Subsequent Driving Outcome: A Prospective Study of Safe and Unsafe Healthy Driver Groups

Abstract

Summary:Older drivers are an increasingly numerous section of the population who are often targeted for driving assessment. Little is known as to whether onroad driving assessments result in an older driver population who have fewer negative driving events. Fifty-eight healthy older drivers (mean age 77, range 71-84, no diagnosis of neurological disorder), completed a non-enforced on-road driving assessment and detailed sensory-motor and cognitive testing. Selfreported and official data regarding crashes and traffic offences were collected for both the five years prior to the on-road assessment, and the 12 months following in order to determine whether those who received a Fail score on the on-road assessment had higher rates of negative driving events than those who passed (43 passed, 15 failed). No increase in adverse outcomes was found either retrospectively or prospectively for those who failed the on-road assessment. Similarly there were no significant differences in cognitive, sensory-motor, and demographic variables between those who passed and failed. Healthy older drivers who failed the on-road assessment did not show evidence of poorer driving behaviour even at the level of descriptive statistics.

Assessment of older drivers in New Zealand: The current system, research and recommendations

“…Notwithstanding, we have performed a 2‐year follow‐up of 60 older drivers who failed a single on‐road driving assessment and who were allowed to continue driving (participants had no neurological diagnosis and had not been referred for assessment). Results at 1‐year follow‐up showed no trends for higher self‐ or police‐reported crashes or traffic offences in the fail group compared with the pass group (15 failed and 43 passed) [4].…”

Self-reporting traffic crashes – a systematic literature review

“…Various motivations were found to drive the studies on self-reporting of traffic crashes, such as safety evaluation [21,, investigation of crash causation factors [22,, determination of the number of crashes for a specific group (e.g., novice drivers, elderly) , estimation of underreporting [15,20,[132][133][134][135][136][137][138][139], calculation of crash costs [140] or other factors (e.g., to investigate the memory effect) [141][142][143][144][145]. However, all studies were conducted at the very least to understand and assess the traffic safety situation.…”