In contrast to the belief of many people, driving is not a luxury for elderly people, it is a necessity and one of the cornerstones of their quality of life. As over 25% of elderly Americans are not able to use public transport and as losing the driving license after several decades of driving may easily lead to immobility and social isolation, it is our obligation to develop the required knowledge, so as to establish national policies for delivering certification of fitness to drive and helping as much as possible older age groups to continue driving safely. Enhanced mobility leads to increased well-being for them. The present paper focuses on two inter-related aspects of driving ability of the elderly. Initially, the accident statistics of elderly drivers are critically reviewed. Older drivers as a group do not have higher accidents rates than other groups, when the statistics are corrected for yearly mileage. They are over-represented however in specific types of accidents, i.e. left turns, T-junctions, lane changing, etc. In accordance to this, the elderly drivers' licenses renewal policies of 12 European countries are compared, showing the lack of a clear concept on who's accidents are elderly accidents, meaning how to find these elderly drivers who, due to psychophysiological problems belong to the enhanced risk group, without putting the whole elderly population in an unnecessary ordeal. The current assessment tools limitations are mentioned and the methodology of AGILE project (QLRT-2001-00118) to develop a new set of training, information, counseling and driving ability and support tools for the elderly is being analysed. For the covering abstract see ITRD E122795.
Abstract