title: Traffic-entry behavior and crash risk for older drivers with impairment of selective attention.
abstract: Current research suggests that older drivers with declines in selective attention would make more unsafe traffic-entry judgments than would older drivers with normal attention. This hypothesis was tested using an instrumented vehicle and a LIDAR speed and range detector. Participants were 20 older drivers: 10 (M=72.0 yr.) had impairments of selective attention, measured with the Visual Attention Analyzer, Model 3000, and 10 were nonimpaired (M=71.2 yr.). Drivers pressed a button to indicate the last possible moment they could safely cross a road in front of an oncoming vehicle. The speed and distance of the oncoming vehicles were measured and time-to-contact was calculated. Each driver's time-to-cross the roadway was independently measured. Attention-impaired drivers showed shorter time-to-contact values (5.60 sec. versus 6.86 sec.), took longer to cross the roadway (5.41 sec. versus 4.84 sec.), and had shorter safety cushions (the difference between time-to-contact and time-to-cross the roadway). Monte Carlo simulation showed that these performance differences increased the crash risk of the impaired group by up to 17.9 times that of the nonimpaired group.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Pietras
authors.forename: Qian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: John D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rizzo
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention; D001334:Automobile Driving / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014796:Visual Perception