To accord mobility and safety issues for elderly drivers considerations on driving competency assessment, a pilot study
GABAUDE
Type de document
COMMUNICATION ORALE SANS ACTES (COM)
Langue
anglais
Auteur
GABAUDE
Résumé / Abstract
To have a greater knowledge of the real difficulties elderly drivers are confronted with, it is necessary to analyse their driving competencies within a framework which takes into account not only fitness to drive but also driving skills and driving behaviour. To pre-test the scoring grid of an assessment procedure developed at inrets, a pilot study was conducted. The objective was to evaluate the impact of visual and cognitive declines on real road driving performance, focusing firstly on driving skills and fitness to drive before including driving behaviour in such an approach. This study was elaborated to identify tests which are shown to predict driving related variables on either crash involvement or road test performance. A case control study was conducted with 40 senior drivers (aged between 61 and 80 years old) recruited via their insurance company for a real road experiment (20 case volunteers having 3 at fault accidents or more during a three year period and 20 control volunteers having no accidents during the same period). Nondriving tests included visual tests (visual acuity in far vision, movement perception and contrast vision) and cognitive tests (mmse, zazzo crossing-out test, weschler digit symbol). The road test resulted in a driving performance evaluation conducted along a fixed route. The dependant variable studied was a penalty score. Weschler digit symbol scoring shows a significant difference between case and control group and significant differences is observed between case and control groups for the total score and for the guided score. An analysis carried out on subtotals on height dimensions (mirror check, visual search, indicator use, lane choice, violation, positioning at intersection) shows a significant difference between case and control on violation criteria. Age, all visual tests, digit symbol scoring and zazzo time are correlated with penalty score. 43% of the variation in the penalty score can be predicted based on age, group and scores obtained with 2 non-driving tests movement perception and zazzo time. The purpose of this pilot study was limited to suggesting a methodology for approaching older driver assessments.
