OLDER-DRIVER RISKS TO THEMSELVES AND TO OTHER ROAD USERS

Risks drivers face themselves and impose on others are examined in terms of the dependence of various crash and fatality rates on age and sex. Some measures of crash involvement increase with age, but their values remain below those for drivers in their late teens and early twenties. If a 16-year-old male driver's crash risk declines by 7% throughout his life, his longevity increase will be greater than the longevity increase that a 65-year-old driver obtains by reducing crash risk to zero. Reducing the younger driver's crash risk by 12% improves pedestrian safety more than reducing the older driver's crash risk to zero. Compared with the other risks of death as one ages, traffic risk plays an ever-diminishing role; if an 18-year-old dies, the probability that death is due to a traffic crash is almost 50%; for a 65-year-old, it is less than 1%. Much larger than any increase in driver risk with increasing age is a decline in driving. Thus, the older-driver problem may be one of reduced mobility more than one of reduced safety.

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