Ebb with age driving skills: study

even healthy seniors with records of safe conduct, and no history of dementia tend to more potentially dangerous mistakes such as forgetting to check a blind spot, a new study.

This suggests that the driving performance declines with normal aging and more errors arise, putting seniors at risk of car accidents, said Australian researchers, who has proposed additional training in related cognitive skills for older drivers.

This suggestion, however, will be probably controversial.

"It's really hard to have the brain", said Renee Pekmezaris, vice President for health and community services in the Department of Population Health Research at North Shore Long Island Jewish health system in New York.

Other studies show that cognitive recycling does not reduce accidents of the conduct of the elderly, said Pekmezaris. "I'm not as good hope that the authors of the study on this subject," she said. "But there is something else we can do."

The study appeared online may 16 in Neuropsychology, a journal of the American Psychological Association.

In the study, researchers examined the driving habits of 266 healthy older drivers from 70 to 88 who lived independently and led at least once a week. In addition to complete questionnaires about their health and their history driving, seniors took tests on various skills at the wheel, such as discrimination, reaction time and ability to remain concentrated in distractions, or adapt to changing conditions.

In the 12-mile road test, a professional instructor with access to a brake mounted in the car. Occupational therapist seated on the seat back and scored pilots for skills such as the use of signals and mirrors, the "blind spot" and the problems which included veering, tailgating, improper braking and accelerating the verification.

Overall, 17 per cent of drivers made serious errors that require the instructor to seize the wheel or apply the brakes.

The rate of critical errors in older drivers from 85 to 89 (which had an average of almost four critical errors) was also four times greater than with these 70 to 74 years (which had on average less than 1).

The most common error is a failure to check the "blind spot" for the other vehicles. Pilots of Declaration of a previous accident on the questionnaire is more related to the observation errors and scored low on appropriate braking and Acceleration, the study found.

Tests performed on both women and men.

"The results correspond well with 30 years of previous research," said Harvey l. Sterns, a professor at Northeastern University Ohio Medical Gerontology research. Driving ability, in General, decreases with age, he said.

But Sterns cautioned that many seniors have no problem handling of a car. Some drivers in the group age studied no error, he said.

"There are greater differences in age between the age groups," said Sterns, also a Professor of Psychology at the University of Akron, Ohio. "It is difficult to know if [is] showing the spectacular changes from an earlier time."

In United States, 33 million drivers aged 65 and over were on the road in 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On average, 500 older adults are injured every day in car accidents, the Agency reported.

As the ageing of the population, the issue will increase in importance, said Sterns. Evidence of cognitive functions that are related to the conduct of skills is "a first step in important", said, noting that some of these functions could be improved with training.

The authors say that their findings are useful for the design of roads and signs, although they recognize that there are limits to their study. One is that the vision of the drivers was not assessed.

Said Pekmezaris aging drivers could do well to change their driving habits and take advantage of technological advances.

Older drivers may need to restrict their driving hours and make use of anti-reflective material and on-board anti-collision devices, she said.

"What we really need is for physicians involved in this", said Pekmezaris. Previous research has revealed that 89% of older drivers reported that they would stop driving if their doctor recommended, she said.