Mild functional decline and driving performance of older drivers without a diagnosed dementia: Study of leukoaraiosis and cognitive function

Aging Brains Degrade Driving Safety Performances of the Healthy Elderly

“…Actual vehicle driving experiments were performed on a closed-circuit course, officially designated for renewing drivers' licenses for elderly drivers by the National Police Agency (The Driver's License Skill Test Implementation Standard Available at National Police Agency, 2016 ), in a driving school in Kochi City, Japan ( Figure 2A ) (Renge et al, 2020 ). The driving course has various locations where driving performance is evaluated, e.g., right and left turns, S-shaped curve, crunch, right and left curves, pauses according to stop signs at intersections, and lane changes.…”

“…Then, the participant drove with the evaluating instructor sitting in the passenger's seat. The official instructors rated the driving skills of each participant using the previously described method (Renge et al, 2020 ). They responded to the items using a five-point scale: 1 (not done), 2 (poorly done), 3 (normally done), 4 (well done), and 5 (very well done).…”

“…After the driving instructors scored the DSPs, DR data were collected and analyzed. As previously described, the duration times of directional signaling with blinkers, from the entrance to the exit of three locations including one right turn and two left turns (①③④ in Figure 2D ), were measured with DR images and timers (KDR-4CU by Kawasaki Kogyo Co., Ltd.) (Renge et al, 2020 ). The summation of duration times at the three locations was later conducted through the imaging playback with DRs.…”

“…Visual research behaviors at these four locations as well as the instructor's evaluations were assessed using WS (OBJE by ATR-Sensetech, Japan) composed of a three-axis gyro chip and a three-axis accelerometer chip (Renge et al, 2020 ). As described in Figure 2 , a WS was attached to the driver's head with a special cap and two others were placed on the participants' right shoe and the central dashboard of the vehicle.…”

“…These studies exhibited the clear impact of LA on DSP. However, during actual driving performances on a closed-circuit course without distracting tasks, LAs were not statistically correlated to a decrease in DSP when age was a confounding factor (Renge et al, 2020 ). The relationship between LAs and DSPs is still unclear.…”