A two-year, multidisciplinary study of the problems of elderly drivers is being conducted by a team of researchers from the areas of driver education, gerontology, and highway/traffic engineering. The objective of the research is to develop and evaluate ways to improve the safety of elderly drivers. This report documents the procedures, findings, and conclusions of the research conducted during the first year, and contains the plan of work for the second year of the research. Chapter 1 provides an introduction. The analysis of the accident data to identify the accident situations in which elderly drivers are over-involved is presented in Chapter 2, and the conditions found at high elderly-driver accident locations are summarised in Chapter 3. The evaluation of the driving knowledge of elderly drivers and the assessment of the physical, perceptual, and cognitive abilities of elderly drivers are presented in Chapters 4 and 5, respectively. The perception-reaction times of elderly drivers with respect to highway design and traffic control are examined in Chapter 6. The driver education and physical and perceptual therapies intended to address the deficiencies of elderly drivers are discussed in Chapter 7. The design of the engineering countermeasures is also presented in Chapter 7. The work plan for the second year of the research is presented in Chapter 8, the final chapter. (A)
Samenvatting