Gasoline Prices and Their Relationship to Drunk-Driving Crashes

his study investigates the relationship between changing gasoline prices and drunk-driving crashes. Specifically, we examine the effects of gasoline prices on drunk-driving crashes in Mississippi by age, gender, and race from 2004Ð2008, a period experiencing great fluctuation in gasoline prices. An exploratory visualization by graphs shows that higher gasoline prices are generally associated with fewer drunk-driving crashes. Higher gasoline prices depress drunk- driving crashes among younger and older drivers, among male and female drivers, and among white, black, and Hispanic drivers. The statistical results suggest that higher gasoline prices lead to lower drunk-driving crashes for female and black drivers. However, alcohol consumption is a better predictor of drunk-driving crashes, especially for male, white, and older drivers.Drunk-driving crashes, gasoline prices, alcohol consumption, Mississippi

The Elderly: A Descriptive study of the perceptions of the elderly and their driving abilities

This study advances the understanding of older driver’s perceptions on their driving abilities. It focuses on examining a deeper and more detailed understanding of the different challenges the elderly are experiencing, in respect to driving and retention of their license. Additionally, it is important for others (such as family, doctors, social workers etc.) to interact with the elderly and assist them in receiving services if they are no longer capable of driving a vehicle, as well as talk with them if they are struggling with giving up their license and consequently their independence. Specifically, the analysis focuses on which gender is a safer driver, if older drivers believe there should be a proper age when driving should be terminated, and what proper steps they take in order to continue their own safety as well as the safety of others on the road. Conclusions underscore the implications for professional practice, policy and research when aging adults who continue to keep a drivers license when they no longer should, placing them in the category of being a concern for society. This sample shows that 83.3% still maintain an active driver’s license. The study shows that older drivers sometimes follow the legal speed limit. Findings from the study include sample shows that maintain an active driver’s license

Road User Interactions: Patterns of Road Use and Perception of Driving Risk

The goal of the Road User Interactions research programme is a better understanding of the human factors of our road transport system: road user demographics, risk perceptions of road users, and the driving attitudes of various road user groups. Our analysis of the 1989 and 1999 New Zealand Household Travel Surveys identified several fundamental road user differences and consistent demographic trends over the past 10 years. The driver characteristics of gender, age, and area of residence (urban, secondary urban, and rural) are the demographic factors which most clearly differentiate New Zealand road user groups. Analysis of the patterns of road use suggests that, although these road user groups do drive at distinctly different times, there are periods of conflict which are also associated with the greatest crash risk for these drivers. Our analysis of a sample of road user groups in Hamilton, Auckland, Gisborne, New Plymouth, and Palmerston North found significant differences in their perceptions of risk and driving behaviours. Rural drivers and women drivers rated a range of driving situations as having greater risk than did the other road user groups, and they rated the high risk scenarios as being much riskier. Men indicated the greatest willingness to accept the risk in driving situations and rated their own driving skill as higher. Older drivers also rated driving situations as having higher risk, and young drivers generally rated low risk situations much lower than other drivers. In the survey of driving behaviour, young men in our sample reported very high levels of violations and aggressive violations. The male drivers’ rates of violations and aggressive violations were significantly higher than the women drivers’ and the number of both decreased significantly with age. Finally, inspection of crash data show that young drivers’ and older drivers’ crashes have some characteristics in common; both groups have a disproportionate number of crossing, turning, and manoeuvring crashes at intersections in the mid-afternoon

Fatally Injured Pedestrians and Bicyclists in the United States with High Blood Alcohol Concentrations

More than one-third of pedestrians and one-fifth of bicyclists killed in crashes in 2014 were impaired by alcohol, but scant attention has been paid to the problem. This omission contrasts starkly with the many successful policies that have reduced impaired driving, a new Institute study notes.The study looked at fatalities of passenger vehicle drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists 16 and older from 1982 to 2014. Using a federal database, IIHS researchers looked at the characteristics of those crashes and trends over time. They found that the percentage of fatally injured pedestrians and bicyclists 16 and older who were impaired has fallen over the decades, but not as dramatically as the percentage of impaired drivers

Understanding Older Vehicle Users: An Interpretative Approach

Future adaptations in vehicle design should be linked in some parts to the age-related changes often faced by the older users. The aim of this research is to investigate the multiple age-related changes of Chinese older vehicle users in order to assist designers to better understand current and future older users’ needs. Although qualitative interpretative approaches have rarely been applied in the field of traffic gerontology research, they are widely used in current design research to explore persons’ lived experiences, behaviours and emotions. Therefore, this study employed qualitative research methods consisting of observation, interview, travel logbook and co-discovery to explore older vehicle users’ travel needs. The interpretative analysis confirmed that multiple methods such as interview, travel logbook, and co-discovery are useful to gain a holistic understanding of older drivers’ travel needs. However, the one journey driving observation cannot provide valuable categories to explore older users’ multiple travel needs due to daily living context absence in the one trip experiment. It is clear that the useful methods for determining research for older users will depend on the product. The findings demonstrate that Chinese future older generations are more concerned about their age-related differences from social and cultural perspective rather than physiological perspective. Social and cultural context play important role to shape older vehicle users’ future travel needs. From design a point of view, understanding the social activity and cultural context surrounds older vehicle users should make it possible to predict older drivers’ needs related to vehicle property. Keywords: Older Vehicle Users; Cultural Context; Social Context; Vehicle Design; Qualitative Research</p

Older drivers: Crash involvement rates and causes

This report presents an analysis of the claims that older drivers are over-represented in road crashes and an examination of the nature of the ‘older driver problem’ in so far as it exists. Four different types of crash rates (crash numbers, crashes per head of population, crashes per licensed driver, crashes per distance driven) are considered, with emphasis placed on problems in interpretation of the various crash rates and what information can be derived from each of them. It is concluded that the crash rates of most importance are total crash numbers and crashes per licensed driver, neither of which were found to feature an over-representation of older drivers. Also addressed in the report is the question of whether the increase in crash rates per distance driven might be a phenomenon associated with older drivers as a whole, or one associated with specific subgroups of older drivers whilst the remainder maintain the relatively low crash rates of middle-aged drivers. Although there are arguments to support the claim that there are high risk subgroups of older drivers, it is nevertheless concluded that high risk older drivers cannot be identified in mass crash data. A third section of the report contains an analysis of a sample of crashes involving older drivers that were investigated as part of an in-depth study into rural road crashes. The factors other than the driver which contributed to the occurrence of the crashes are discussed, illustrating the importance of appropriate road infrastructure for reducing older driver crashes.M.R.J. Baldock and A.J. McLea

As UK society ages, ‘nudging’ older people to self-regulate the way they drive may improve road safety and improve their wellbeing

As society ages, it is inevitable that there will be an increasing numbers of older drivers on our roads. Yet there is no evidence that older drivers are less safe than other age groups or that restrictive regulatory systems produce safer roads. Dr Craig Berry of the International Longevity Centre-UK considers whether this is a policy area amenable to the government’s ‘nudge’ agenda

Effects of age in Useful Field of View and Time-to-Arrival

The main aim of this study was to investigate possible age effects in Useful Field of View (UFOV) and Time to Arrival (TTA). Ninety-six male and female active drivers participated in this research: 32 young drivers (18-30 years old), 32 middle-aged drivers (38-50 years old) and 32 older drivers (60-75 years old). Concerning to UFOV, results showed that older drivers had poorer results in divided attention and selective attention. Furthermore, some nonlinear variation occur, revealing a much more evident decrease in visual attention performance from the middle-aged to the older group then from the younger to the middle-aged group. In TTA analysis, older adults were less consistent then the other drivers in judging a vehicle approaching at 50 km/h. TTA estimated accuracy increased when the approaching vehicle travels at higher speeds. Although not significant, it was founded a U-shape relationship between age and response bias of TTA. We conclude that UFOV is much more sensitive to age effects then TTA and interventions should be designed to enhance UFOV between older drivers. The effectiveness of TTA paradigm for driving behavior analysis is also discussed

Right-lateralised lane keeping in young and older British drivers

Young adults demonstrate a small, but consistent, asymmetry of spatial attention favouring the left side of space (“pseudoneglect”) in laboratory-based tests of perception. Conversely, in more naturalistic environments, behavioural errors towards the right side of space are often observed. In the older population, spatial attention asymmetries are generally diminished, or even reversed to favour the right side of space, but much of this evidence has been gained from lab-based and/or psychophysical testing. In this study we assessed whether spatial biases can be elicited during a simulated driving task, and secondly whether these biases also shift with age, in line with standard lab-based measures. Data from 77 right-handed adults with full UK driving licences (i.e. prior experience of left-lane driving) were analysed: 38 young (mean age = 21.53) and 39 older adults (mean age = 70.38). Each participant undertook 3 tests of visuospatial attention: the landmark task, line bisection task, and a simulated lane-keeping task. We found leftward biases in young adults for the landmark and line bisection tasks, indicative of pseudoneglect, and a mean lane position towards the right of centre. In young adults the leftward landmark task biases were negatively correlated with rightward lane-keeping biases, hinting that a common property of the spatial attention networks may have influenced both tasks. As predicted, older adults showed no group-level spatial asymmetry on the landmark nor the line bisection task, but they maintained a mean rightward lane position, similar to young adults. The 3 tasks were not inter-correlated in the older group. These results suggest that spatial biases in older adults may be elicited more effectively in experiments involving complex behaviour rather than abstract, lab-based measures. More broadly, these results confirm that lateral biases of spatial attention are linked to driving behaviour, and this could prove informative in the development of future vehicle safety and driving technology

The Response to Fines and Probability of Detection in a Series of Experiments

We use traffic data from a series of experiments in the United States and Israel to examine how illegal behavior is deterred by various penalty schemes and whether deterrence varies with age, income, driving record and criminal record. We find that red light running decreases sharply in response to an increase in the fine or an increase in the probability of being caught. The elasticity of violations with respect to the fine is larger for younger drivers and drivers with older cars. Drivers convicted of violent offenses or property offenses run more red lights on average but have the same elasticity as drivers without a criminal record. Within Israel, members of ethnic minority groups have the smallest elasticity with respect to a fine increase.