A battery of closed-course driving and laboratory tests was developed for evaluating the skills required in routine suburban driving. Twenty-three younger (aged 30 to 51 years) and 21 older (aged 74 to 83 years) adults participated. Driving tests included responding to traffic signals, selecting routes, avoiding moving hazards, and judging narrow gaps. Laboratory tests included measures of perceptual style, selective attention, reaction time, visual acuity, perceptual speed, and risk-taking propensity. Older drivers were generally slower and less consistent in their driving. The groups did not differ from each other on measures of caution. In the laboratory, older drivers scored lower on tasks requiring rapid switching of attention. Differences in laboratory measures were larger, reflecting the greater difficulty of these tasks and the greater precision available in the laboratory. The pattern of greater variability of performance for the older drivers indicates that driving ability should not be judged on the basis of chronological age. This paper appears in Transportation Research Record No. 1281, Human Factors and Safety Research Related to Highway Design and Operation 1990.
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