Funding
Agency: National
Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health
Project Identifier: R01-AG14684
Principal Investigator: Cynthia
Owsley
The objective of this project is to identify performance
limitations that place older drivers at risk for crashes,
especially those that result in injury to the older driver.
Special attention will be directed at visual and cognitive
performance since: (1) they are critical skills for vehicle
control; (2) these skills tend to decline with age; and
(3) prior research has indicated that visual and cognitive
declines are risk factors for unsafe driving among the elderly.
This objective will be addressed by the assembly and analysis
of pooled data from four cohorts of older drivers totaling
3646 subjects. Pooling techniques, a type of meta-analysis,
will be used to examine what functional impairments and
medical conditions elevate injurious crash risk in older
drivers. Analysis techniques will take into account potential
heterogeneity in the four individual cohorts. The cohorts
proposed for study will have up to 9 years of follow-up
(median 3.5 yrs) of crash data on subjects.
