OLDER DRIVER INVOLVEMENT IN INJURY CRASHES IN TEXAS 1975 - 1999

In this study, 25 years of police-level crash data from nearly 4 million injury crashes in the state of Texas were analyzed to determine the association between driver age and four factors: fragility-the likelihood of death among drivers involved in injury crashes; illness-the likelihood that drivers were ill or suffering from some other physical defect at the time of their crashes; perceptual lapses- the likelihood that drivers involved in crashes failed to yield the right of way or disregarded traffic signs or signals; and left turns-the likelihood that left turns were involved in injury crashes. The purpose of the study was to further understand these four factors and other variables and to portray in graphical format their association with crashes involving older drivers. The control variables used in the analyses included whether drivers were involved in single-vehicle or multiple-vehicle crashes; whether the crash occurred in an urban or a rural setting; the driver's sex; the light conditions at the time of the crash (daylight or darkness); and whether or not the crash was related to an intersection. Additional analyses examined two-vehicle, intersection-related crashes in which the vehicles approached one another from opposite directions or approached one another at an angle.