Older drivers don’t text and crash
Despite some evidence that elderly drivers have increasing eyesight problems, a new review has found that vision tests do not necessarily lead to fewer fatal crashes.
Dr Sayed Subzwari, a Canadian physician and researcher, said that “we have this hypothesis that as the years pass you have more age-related eye conditions”.
But the review by a Vancouver based team found there was little evidence to support the theory that elderly drivers were theoretically more accident-prone.
The team screened more than 4,500 related driving studies including outside data by bodies such as the Insurance Institute for highway safety which reported that fewer older drivers died or were involved in fatal collisions from 1997 to 2006 than in past years. Crash deaths among drivers 70 and older fell 21% in that nine year period.
The Institute’s senior vice president, Anne McCartt, said that “the problem with older drivers is that, yes, there are age-related impairments that, on average, we experience when we get older, but there are a lot of differences among elderly drivers too”.
Ms McCartt said that “we’re not sure why older drivers are doing better. But older drivers are less likely to be in alcohol-related crashes. They don’t talk on the phone to the same extent as younger drivers and they don’t steer while sending text messages – my parents don’t know what text messaging is”.
