Time-to-Contact and Collision-Detection Estimations as Measures of Driving Safety in Old and Dementia Drivers

The paper discusses the importance of Time-to-Contact (TTC) and collision occurrence (CD) estimations for safe driving. It describes a computerised testing tool that requires TTC and CD estimations while dividing attention and discusses the association between performance on this task and several measures of driving safety. We report four studies showing that the task is sensitive to age effects and dementia effects, that the accuracy of Time-to-Contact estimations differentiates between old and dementia drivers recently involved in accidents and those not involved. We also found an association between performance on this task and that on navigation and car following tasks in a driving simulator