Aging Increases Risks

When you consider driving safety as it applies to particular age groups, it may be natural to assume that very young, inexperienced drivers would be the group that would be most likely to die in an automobile accident. However, researchers have found that drivers who are 85 years of age and older are more likely to die in a car wreck than any other age group.

Many seniors in this age range have health problems that can overcome them when they are driving, and clearly, one’s reflexes and reaction times are probably going to get slower at this stage of life. Interestingly, the study did not indicate that drivers who are over 85 cause more fatal accidents than other age groups. So the risk to themselves and their passengers increases, but they don’t pose a greater risk to other drivers.

The study, which was conducted in consort with AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, also indicated that when drivers reach seventy years of age they begin to become more likely to be involved in a fatal accident, and that risk increases more rapidly when an individual reaches the age of 75. Drivers who are 85 years old and older are some two to three times more likely to die in an automobile accident than drivers who are sixteen or seventeen years old.

It is true that older drivers may lose some road awareness and get into accidents that others may be able to avoid, but there is another factor at play. Seniors are not as resilient physically as younger folks. Many times the passengers who are in cars that are operated by people who are 85 or over are senior citizens themselves, which explains why passengers are statistically at greater risk, but not other drivers.

“The finding that older drivers have elevated rates of passenger fatalities may also be attributable, at least in part to their passengers being older—and thus more susceptible to injury,” said Matt Skryja, who is a spokesman for AAA Northern California.

The findings of the study are interesting somewhat surprising. Travel by automobile has become such a necessity, especially if you don’t get around that well on your feet, that it is easy to understand why many people would continue to drive as their faculties decrease. There are no easy answers, but the families of seniors should definitely monitor their love ones closely and try to offer them alternatives to driving if necessary.