There have been a number of highly publicised cases of elderly people driving “badly”, for example driving the wrong way on a motorway or at 9mph on a dual carriageway. Such cases have caused people to question the existing licensing rules for elderly drivers. Currently, older adults simply need to re-apply when they reach the age of 70 years old and inform the DVLA if they have any medical condition that may influence their driving abilities. Some have suggested that additional tests may be needed to reduce the risks of elderly drivers, but first it’s necessary to understand why the elderly are more collision prone.

There are some obvious reasons why older adults might be more at risk of causing a crash; deteriorating eyesight and motor control are two factors that may contribute, but they by no means provide a complete explanation. Indeed, much of the increased risk can be explained in terms of the psychological changes and cognitive decline that occurs in later life.

Driving is a highly complex activity, requiring the driver to allocate their attention to a range of different tasks but attention is one aspect of cognitive processing that declines in later life. Researcher Liisa Hakamies-Blomqvist has suggested that this may be one of the main contributory factors.

She asked older and middle-aged drivers whether they were aware of the risk of a collision before it occurred. For the middle-aged drivers 74% were aware, but only 66% of the older adults were aware. It seems that older drivers may find it difficult to monitor and pay attention to all the different aspects of driving. They are therefore not likely to notice a potential danger and would be unable to attempt to avoid an incident.

The cognitive decline that many older adults experience may also contribute to increased driving risk. Professor Timothy Salthouse from the University of Virginia is one of the leading experts in cognitive ageing. He has suggested that one of the main consequences of cognitive ageing is a decrease in the speed with which information can be processed. This means that older adults may take longer to notice a potential hazard and to then respond to it. Salthouse has also suggested that older adults find it difficult to process multiple pieces of information at the same time. Consequently they may tend to concentrate on one aspect of driving at a time. Given how rapidly things occur when driving, it’s easy to imagine how challenging driving would be if you could only pay attention to one thing at a time and slowly process that information before moving on to process the next piece.

Although there are a number of reasons why drivers become more accident prone in old age, there are actually some aspects of driving in which older drivers are less risky. For instance, the elderly are far less likely to drive after consuming alcohol and are more likely to wear prescription glasses whilst driving. Also, older adults are more likely to drive in a generally cautious manner. They are also less likely to speed, however this might also become a risky behaviour if speed drops too low, as has occurred in a number of cases.

While it’s clear that elderly drivers may be more accident prone, we do not know exactly why this is the case, and there are likely to be multiple reasons that contribute to the increased accident risk. How might we reduce this risk? There appear to be two strategies, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. First, it may be possible to provide training to elderly drivers that can make them aware of the possible risks and to teach them techniques that help them to drive safely. Second, methods might be developed that allow the licensing authorities to identify elderly drivers that are more “at risk” of causing a collision. Such identification may then feed into decisions about renewing the driving licence of older adults.

Dr Victoria Bourne (BA Hons, DPhil)

 Consultant to Driving Risk Management Limited

Imagine this situation: You are driving down a very narrow road and you accidentally clipped the wing mirror of a parked car. There was no damage to either car, so no harm done, but how would you react? Are you likely to blame yourself for not paying enough attention or for being too risky? Or would it be the fault of the person who parked the car, obviously too far out from the kerb!

Whether you tend to blame yourself or someone else for things that happen to you, most people will tend to be quite consistent in this behaviour. In 1966 a psychologist called Julian Rotter developed the locus of control scale. Locus of control refers to the beliefs that people have about why things happen to them.

There are two locus of control “personality” types: internal and external. Someone with an internal locus of control believes that they are responsible for their own actions and that they can control things that happen to them. So they would have believed that clipping someone’s wing mirror was their fault. Someone with an external locus of control believes that other people, or perhaps fate, determine the things that happen to them. So they would have blamed the person who parked the car rather than themselves.

The locus of control theory has been highly influential in psychology and has been applied to many different areas of research, including driving research. Özkan and Lajunen[i] developed the multidimensional traffic locus of control scale (T-LOC). The T-LOC is a questionnaire which presents sixteen potential causes for an incident to occur. For each cause the participant has to rate how likely it is that an collision that they were involved in could have been caused in that way.

They found that the T-LOC identified four different aspects of locus of control with regards to driving. One factor reflects the traditional internal locus of control where a driver is most likely to blame themselves for an accident. The other three dimensions were of different aspects of the external locus of control: other drivers, vehicle/environment and fate.

In addition to developing the T-LOC, Özkan and Lajunen also examined how the four different factors might be associated with risky driving behaviour. The “self”, or internal, T-LOC scale was the aspect most highly correlated with risky driving behaviour predicting the number of collisions, offenses and violations that a person committed. Someone who blames themselves is likely to drive in a riskier way. The external scale of “vehicle and environment” was also predictive of committing offenses and errors with those who blame the vehicle and environment being less likely to participate in risky driving. “Blaming other drivers” was only predictive of errors and “fate” did not predict any of the risky driving behaviours.

The same research group more recently looked at whether the T-LOC can predict whether people speed or not[ii]. When driving on a road with a 50 km/h speed limit none of the T-LOC scales were predictive of driving behaviour. However, relationships were found when people were driving on a road with a 90 km/h speed limit. People who are likely to blame their own driving behaviour for crashes were more likely to speed whereas those who tend to blame the vehicle and the environment were less likely to speed.

In many respects, locus of control is quite similar to a personality trait. This means that it is unlikely that you can simply “change” your locus of control type in order for you to reduce possible risky driving behaviours. An awareness of whether you tend to have an internal or an external locus of control may help you to better understand you own driving behaviours, especially if you are involved in a collision.

[i]Özkan and Lajunen (2005)

[ii]Warner et al (2010)

Dr Victoria Bourne (BA Hons, DPhil)

Consultant to Driving Risk Management Limited

Using a hand held mobile phone when you’re driving has been illegal in the UK for many years. This has been widely publicised and it would be difficult for any driver, especially one who drives as a part of their job, to admit not being aware of this law.

It’s now widely acknowledged that using a mobile phone, even with a legal hands free kit, reduces your ability to concentrate on driving and the chances of having a collision increase substantially. Despite considerable publicity associated with incidents involving serious injury or even death, why do some people continue to use mobile phones when they are driving?

Surprisingly, a large number of people admit to using their mobile phones illegally, with some surveys finding up to 60% of respondents admitting to regularly breaking the law. A recent study conducted in Australia believes that the explanation lies with the ‘Theory of Planned Behaviour’.

This theory suggests that there are three reasons why people behave in a particular way:

• their attitudes towards the behaviour
• their subjective norms and the amount that their behaviour might be influenced by others
• their perceived behavioural control or their belief in how well they can carry out the behaviour

In addition to these behavioural components, it’s also possible that the driver’s personality and the driving situation may influence whether someone will use a mobile phone when driving.

Researcher Mark Rozario and colleagues asked participants to rate how likely they were to use a mobile phone in different situations; when either driving alone or with passengers and when either being early or late to arrive somewhere.

They found that people were more likely to use a mobile phone when driving alone, regardless of whether they were running late or whether they were on time to arrive at their destination.

When the research team considered the Theory of Planned Behaviour, they found that all three components were significantly correlated with a driver’s willingness to use a mobile phone whilst driving. If a driver believes mobile phone use is not harmful, if their subjective norms are highly influenced by others and if they believe that their driving skill does not decrease when using a mobile phone, they are far more likely to use one.

Although this finding suggests that there are three different reasons why people may be willing to use a mobile phone, neither being extraverted nor being neurotic was associated with mobile phone use.

Another study recently conducted at the University of Beijing examined whether it was possible to change a driver’s attitude towards mobile phone use whilst driving. The participants in the study were asked to drive two routes in a driving simulator, one whilst having a mobile phone conversation and then one without.

Half of the participants were then provided with training to increase their awareness and understanding of how their mobile phone use influenced their driving behaviour. They viewed a video of their driving in each situation, whilst a trainer gave them feedback on their behaviours and possible risks. Participants who received the feedback training had a significant reduction in their self-reported willingness to use a mobile phone whilst driving, and this change in attitude was still apparent a month after the feedback training was given.

So it seems clear that, by providing training and by raising the driver’s awareness of the issues of mobile phone usage whilst driving, it is possible to reduce the potential for incidents and collisions to occur.

Dr Victoria Bourne (BA Hons, DPhil)

Consultant to Driving Risk Management Limited