Investigation of Actual and Perceived Behavior of Older Drivers on Freeways

Actual performance of older drivers was investigated on tasks such as freeway driving, exit finding, lane changing, and freeway entering and exiting and correlated with driver (performance) self-assessment. The focus is on safe driving and potentially compensatory behavior being exhibited by older drivers; for this, results of an on-road experiment with 40 older drivers were used. Results indicated that compensation on the freeway is correlated to decreased performance in various driving dimensions; some performance problems revealed in the present study might be corrected by training in proper ways to adapt and in safe driving practices. Results regarding the analysis of actual driving performance on the freeway and perceived self-assessed performance indicate that older drivers are aware of their performance inadequacies on the freeway and reveal some drivers’ perception for improvements in the design of freeway exits. These findings are of particular importance in freeway design and older driver education and assessment.

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