The focus of the work presented in this scientific poster was to investigate crashes caused by drivers 65 years old and older, along with deaths and injuries resulting from these crashes. Data files containing information on two-vehicle crashes were developed from three data sources: North Carolina crash data, Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and the General Estimates System (GES). Each of these data files contained information on contributing factors or violations associated with each driver's involvement in the crash. A driver was considered at-fault in a two-vehicle crash if one or more contributing factors was associated with that driver's involvement and none with the other driver. The results show, among other things, that left turn manoeuvre crashes and crashes involving angle collisions where the case driver manoeuvre was going straight were crashes where older drivers were increasingly likely to be at-fault in all three data files. Using the sampling weights from GES, a national estimate of two-car crashes where a driver 65 years old or older was at-fault was obtained of 421,723 crashes in 1998. It was also estimated that these crashes resulted in 91,064 injuries in the older driver's vehicle and 137,734 injuries in the other vehicle.
Abstract