The issue of older driver crash responsibility has been explored first, through the analysis of Australian national fatality data, 1996-1999, which contain attributions of responsibility made by coroners, police or by independent data coders. Secondly, crash records from a leading Tasmanian insurance company have been linked to the Tasmanian crash database managed by the Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources (DIER), to explore patterns in crash responsibility across the two attribution sources (police and insurance assessors). Based on both the available research and the analysis conducted as part of this report, it was concluded that older drivers are around 1.5 times more likely to be judged as responsible for their crashes than other age groups. It was also concluded that older drivers’ additional crash responsibility, while valuable in explaining ‘what went wrong’ in crashes, made only a small contribution to the overall road toll. It was consequently argued that road safety programs needed to target all older driver crashes regardless of responsibility levels if they were to achieve a meaningful impact. (Author/publisher)
Abstract