Mobilité et accès à la voiture chez les personnes âgées : évolutions actuelles et enjeux

Travel practices and access to the car among the elderly : Current developments and issues. In France, and in most other industrialised countries, demographic ageing means that in the next decades there will be a rise among the elderly in vehicle ownership and driving for daily trips, long distance travel and leisure trips. This paper demonstrates the existence of these trends by drawing on a variety of statistical sources — National Transport and Communication Surveys, Urban Household Travel Surveys (Lyon) and surveys on French holiday practices. We nevertheless demonstrate that this structural change exhibits a high degree of differentiation with regard to gender, household income, place of residence and state of health. This change, which increases car use, is expected to continue during the next few years, especially among elderly women. Long term changes in lifestyles encourage the view that in the future people will cease to drive at a more advanced age. The increase in car use has important long-term implications in two areas. On the one hand it will affect road safety, on the other hand it raises the issues of the sustainability of mobility and the obligation to meet the needs of persons who are no longer able to drive.