A COMPARATIVE APPROACH TO IDENTIFY UNSAFE OLDER DRIVERS

The identification of unsafe older drivers is a current and important challenge. In the present research, a comparative approach was used in which the on road driving errors and expert evaluations of older driv ers with clinically significant declines in mental abilities (N=155) w ere compared to the errors and evaluations of a normal elderly control group (N=68) and a normal younger control group (N=30). The results i ndicate that the conventional criteria used in North America for licen sing new drivers is inappropriate for license removal in experienced d rivers. The results also indicate that hazardous errors were the singl e best indicator of membership in the group of older drivers with clin ical impairment. This group also differs from the two normal control g roups on turn positioning errors, minor positioning errors and overcau tiousness. All groups differ from each other on scanning errors. A reg ression analysis further indicated that the five driving errors listed above accounted for over 57% of the variance associated with global r atings provided by expert driving instructors. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd. All rights reserved.