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There is an extensive, and continually expanding, research literature on older drivers, reflecting concerns that projected increases in the older driver population will increase societal harm from traffic crashes. One recent review, 1 focusing on just one aspect of older driver research, lists 428 references. The older-driver literature contains many papers focusing on how specific variables vary with age. However, no one paper provides a comprehensive up-to-date presentation in a consistent formalism of how the most basic quantities related to traffic safety change as drivers become older. This paper presents relationships between various male and female involvement rates related to traffic safety and driver age using 1994-1996 US data. The paper is self-contained-all the results presented flow directly from the data analysed, thereby facilitating comparison of how the various rates relate to each other. The results may be compared readily with earlier results 2,3 based on 1980s data to gain insight into effects due demographic and other developments in the intervening decade. The presentation of the earlier work which is most convenient for comparison with the present results is contained in Chapter 2 (Sex and Age Effects) of Ref. 4; this reference contains additional background to much of the material covered in this paper.Driver risks in traffic are best separated into two distinct components: (a) risks to the drivers themselves, and (b) threats the drivers impose on other road users.These components are of a different nature. There is near universal agreement that society should take stronger measures to prevent its members from doing things that endanger others than to prevent them from doing things that endanger only themselves. Public safety makes a stronger claim on public resources than does personal safety, which can be supported often using personal resources. Differences between the risks we assume ourselves and threats we pose on others impact legislation, licensing policy, police enforcement, and so on. Both components are examined by plotting a number of rates versus age and sex. DataThe following data sets are used:1 Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), a census of all traffic crashes in the US since 1975 in which anyone was killed on a public road. 5

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