Risks drivers face themselves and impose on others are examined in terms of the dependence of various crash and fatality rates on age and sex. Some measures of crash involvement increase with age, but their values remain below those for drivers in their late teens and early twenties. If a 16-year-old male driver's crash risk declinesby 7% throughout his life, his longevity increase will be greater than the longevity increase that a 65-year-old driver obtains by reducing crash risk to zero. Reducing the younger driver's crash risk by12% improves pedestrian safety more than reducing the older driver's crash risk to zero. Compared with the other risks of death as one ages, traffic risk plays an ever-diminishing role; if an 18-year-olddies, the probability that death is due to a traffic crash is almost 50%; for a 65-year-old, it is less than 1%. Much larger than any increase in driver risk with increasing age is a decline in driving. Thus, the older-driver problem may be one of reduced mobility more than one of reduced safety. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1325, Highway safety: older drivers, seat belts, alcohol, motorcycles, and pedestrians 1991
Abstract