In Sweden the number of older people holding a drivers licence is rapidly increasing, as is the number of older persons driving a car. This paper is based on 2 surveys of the Swedish driving population aged 15-84 years, which were carried out by the Swedish Central Bureau of Statistics in 1978 and 1984. It examines driver risk of accident by age group, focusing on the older driver. Two different measures of accident risk are used: involvement in personal injury traffic accidents per million kilometers driven, and involvement in traffic accidents where one or more pedestrians were injured per million kilometres driven. The latter measure is used to refute the assumption that the elderly's risk of being involved in personal injury accidents might, to some extent, be explained by the fact that older drivers generally tend to run a higher risk than younger drivers of being injured in the event of a traffic accident. Another motive is that it provides a measure of the extent to which drivers of different ages present a risk to their fellow road users. This study shows that drivers in the 75-84 age group are at four to six times greater risk than are middle-aged drivers of being involved in personal injury traffic accidents. For the covering abstract of the conference, see IRRD 837684.
Abstract