The FTA's Constrained Based Methodology in Risk Assessment of Crash and Condition Monitoring for Older Drivers on Roads

There has been a marked increase in the number of older drivers across the globe. The aging comes with limitations in physical, sensory, and perceptual abilities affecting driving by older people. Mobility is a universal fundamental right of living that cannot be taken away. However, the mobility of older people by their own vehicles demands special considerations by transportation authorities and older drivers themselves. The number of crashes and severity of casualties caused by older drivers indicate that older drivers should be considered as vulnerable users on roads and a risk to others. Authors have identified the potential causes of crashes by the older drivers and modeled the risk of crash using fault tree analysis (FTA). As the human-involved causes in the FTA are constantly under influence from each other, their effects affect proportionally and accumulatively on the total level of workload imposed on drivers. This characteristic has been mathematically modelled and integrated into the developed FTA. The transportation authorities and auto industries can benefit from this research to further advance the design of technologies used in vehicles and roads and to better analyze and address the risk caused by older drivers on roads.