News

The overall aim of this new SAFER associated project is to investigate motor vehicle accidents with elderly drivers (65+) involved regarding accident circumstances, driver diagnoses and medications as well as occupant injuries vs vehicle safety level.

We have an aging driver population and studies show that our elder drivers are overrepresented in fatal and serious crashes. Cars have been safer, but may, in some cases, be less optimized for older, more fragile, occupants. Some drivers adjust their behaviour when they become older, for example by driving closer to home the older they are. But this is not always the case; some also lose automated driving tasks and may overestimate their driving capabilities.

The study aims to understand more about this group of drivers and the project team aims to look into the following research questions:

• In which traffic environments and roads does the accidents occur?
• Increase of accidents closer to home with age of car drivers?
• Change in mileage and accident risk with age of car drivers?
• Occurrence of certain diseases, diagnoses and medications among accident-involved elderly drivers:
  • Passenger car drivers?
  • Professional drivers of taxi, bus or trucks?
• Change of mileage and accident risk for eldrely car drivers’ with diagnoses, diseases and medications? 

The project, which will be associated to SAFER’s project portfolio within the research area of Safety performance evaluation, is financied by Trafikverket by 1,8MSEK and will be concluded in October 2022. SAFER partners are VTI and Folksam. Jesper Sandin is the project leader. For SAFER, this project will create value since we aim to develop knowledge about the cause of traffic accidents with elderly drivers, which has a direct impact on reducing traffic accidents and strive towards vision zero.