Attitudes: Mediators of the Relation between Health and Driving in Older Adults

Abstract

We examined the relations between perceived health (e.g., self-perceived health status) and driving self-regulatory practices (e.g., frequency of driving, avoiding challenging driving situations) as mediated by driving attitudes and perceptions (i.e., driving comfort, positive and negative attitudes towards driving) in data collected for 928 drivers aged 70 and older enrolled in the Candrive II study. We observed that specific attitudes towards driving (e.g., driving comfort, negative attitudes towards driving) mediate the relations between health symptoms and self-regulatory driving behaviours at baseline and over time. Only negative attitudes towards driving fully mediated the relationships between changes in perceived health symptoms and changes in driving behavior. Perceived health symptoms apparently influence the likelihood of avoiding challenging driving situations through both initial negative attitudes towards driving as well as changes in negative attitudes over time. Understanding influences on self-regulatory driving behaviours will be of benefit when designing interventions to enhance the safety of older drivers.

Adherence to driving cessation advice given to patients with cognitive impairment and consequences for mobility

“…The measures used for the present study represent a selection of measures as obtained from a comprehensive fitness-to-drive assessment following the protocol as described by Piersma and colleagues [ 1 ]. The preselection of measures was based on the literature and intended to cover relevant factors for driving cessation [ 10 , 11 , 13 , 18 , 22 , 27 , 29 – 35 , 37 , 39 , 41 , 42 , 44 ].…”

“…Furthermore, older people reported other reasons for driving cessation such as no need to drive anymore (e.g. because of retirement), decreased confidence while driving or lack of enjoyment during driving, and costs of fuel and upkeep of the car [ 18 , 34 , 39 – 41 ].…”

“…If family members do bring up the topic, older drivers may not be willing to follow up their advice [ 18 ]. Moreover, there is a minority of family members who encourage continuation of driving because they believe the patient still drives safely or they benefit from the patient’s driving [ 11 , 22 , 23 , 41 ]. In the majority of cases, patients with dementia and their family members need support from physicians regarding counselling and evaluation of the patient’s fitness to drive [ 13 , 18 ].…”

The Effect of Fuel Prices on the Driving Patterns of Older adults

“…Examining factors that mediate the effect of gas prices on driving patterns may also be useful in determining psychological processes that promote or dampen its effect. For example, psychosocial variables, such as driving confidence and attitudes, have been shown to influence driving self-regulation by mediating the association with physical health and driving outcomes (Conlon et al, 2017;Tuokko et al, 2016). It is possible that holding positive or negative attitudes towards driving may interact with an individual's decisions to restrict their driving on occasions when gas prices are high.…”

“…Much of the existing research on factors that influence older adults' driving practices has mainly focused on individual and interpersonal predictors. Cognitive function and physical health (Marshall & Man-Son-Hing, 2011;Tuokko et al, 2016), as well as psychosocial factors including attitudes (Sukhawathanakul et al, 2015;Wong, Smith, & Sullivan, 2017), comfort level (Molnar et al, 2014;Myers et al, 2008), and confidence (Conlon, Rahaley, & Davis, 2017) have all been shown to predict self-reported driving self-regulation.…”