Older driver involvement in fatal and severe traffic crashes.

The question of the risks older drivers face, and impose on others, was addressed by examining as a function of age and sex: (a) driver involvement in crashes in the same high severity range; (b) the threat drivers pose to pedestrians; and (c) the contribution of motor vehicle fatalities to overall mortality. National data files provide source information on traffic fatalities, population, number of licensed drivers, distance of travel, and mortality from all causes. Involvement rates in severe crashes are inferred from fatality data using recently published relations linking occupant survivability to age and sex. In no case among 14 measures examined did the value at the oldest age for which data were available (varied from source to source) exceed that for young drivers. Although some risks that drivers face may increase at older ages to levels above their minimum values, the increases are small compared to the substantial reductions in distances driven with increasing age; thus, reductions in mobility may be a more dominant correlate of aging than reductions in driving safety.