Age-Related Differences in Motor-Vehicle Crash Severity in California

Abstract

With ongoing changes in the age distribution of drivers in the United States, it is important to obtain insights on how to make the roadways equally safe for drivers across different age groups. In light of this, the objective of this study is to examine various crash characteristics and make recommendations on how to potentially improve roadway safety for all age groups. Using the Highway Safety Information System (HSIS) data, this study investigates the factors influencing motor-vehicle crash injury severity for young (aged 16–25), middle-aged (aged 26–64), and older drivers (above 64) in the state of California. A multinomial logit model was used to separately model crashes involving each age group and to evaluate the weight of different predictor variables on driver injury severity. The predictor variables were classified into four—driver, roadway, accident and environmental characteristics. Results suggest that there are close relationships between severity determinants for young and middle-aged drivers. However, older drivers tend to be most cautious among all age groups under all environmental and roadway conditions. Young drivers are more likely to explore their driving skills due to newness to driving. Middle-aged drivers are familiar with driving and tend to demonstrate less cautious behaviors, especially male drivers. Another insight obtained from this study is that older driver behavior is less dynamic compared to other age groups; their driving pattern is usually regular regardless of the surrounding conditions.

Cooperate or not? Exploring drivers’ interactions and response times to a lane-changing request in a connected environment

“…Merat et al (2005) observed that the response times of older drivers when they were exposed to in-vehicle information systems are shorter compared to that of middle-aged drivers driving in the same condition. A possible reason of shorter response times of older drivers compared to middle-aged drivers is less cautious behaviour of middle-aged drivers who tend to rely more on their driving skills (Adebisi et al, 2019). Overall, both (middle-aged and older) drivers decrease their response times in the connected environment compared to when they are driving in the baseline condition.…”

Analysis of Transport and Vehicular Crash Cases Using the Online National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (ONEISS) from 2010 to 2019

“…13,14 This may be attributed to the fact that younger people are more at risk for engaging in risky behaviors such as speeding, drifting, one-wheeling competitions, rash driving, reckless and aggressive driving, impulsivity, and drunk driving, 11 while older adults are more experienced and cautious. 15,16 The study showed that males (72.5%) were more likely to be involved in road crash compared to females (27.5%). In another study, males were three times more likely to die as compared to females (Ding et al, 2016).…”

Wound Pattern Profile in Deceased Victims of Traffic Accidents in Raden Said Sukanto Bhayangkara Hospital Jakarta from January 2017 until December 2018

“…This is due to male driver tends to drive more aggressively whereas female driver tends to drive more cautious. 13 The age group that becomes the most fatalities with 29 casualties are adults from the age of 26-45 years old. From the age of 20-29 years old, the crash risk was at the highest and it will decrease progressively until the age of 60-69 years old.…”