Risk factors may point to less-safe senior drivers

By Allison Bond NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tests of physical abilities, such as balance and strength, may reveal how well an elderly driver will perform on the road, according to a new study. Trouble with balance, weak lower limbs and poor neck flexibility were among the attributes Australian researchers linked to a higher risk of less-safe driving in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A. "Although there has been a lot of research on the cognitive and visual predictors of driving performance and safety, very little work has so far looked at physical function and its relation to driving," said Philippe Lacherez, a post-doctoral fellow at Queensland University of Technology who led the study. About 17 percent of the participants made critical errors while driving in a test that was scored by a professional driving instructor and involved a range of traffic densities and complex or simple intersections. In the physical abilities tests, the unsafe drivers tended to have a decreased ability to move the neck, slower reaction times, poor perception of vibration and lack of strength in the legs and feet.



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