It is a well-established phenomenon that, notwithstanding their overall good crash record, older drivers have a higher than average rate of involvement in injury crashes when the rate is calculated by dividing crash numbers by distance driven. It has been hypothesised that at least some of this higher crash rate is an artefact of the different nature of driving undertaken by many older drivers. High-quality data from the New Zealand Travel Survey (1997/98) was combined with crash data to enable a statistical model to estimate the risk of driver groups under various driving conditions characterised by the type of road used, time of day, day of week and season of year. Despite elevated crash risks per distance driven for most road types, older drivers were as safe as any other age group when driving on motorways. The driving patterns of older drivers (in terms of when and where they drive) appear to minimise their risks in comparison with the driving patterns of other age groups. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E210413.
Samenvatting