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Summary Elderly drivers were no more likely to die on the road than those in their twenties.
Driving gets more dangerous with age, but older adults may be more vulnerable while walking on the sidewalk than behind the wheel, says a new study.Researchers who reviewed data on road accident deaths in the UK found that pedestrians over 70 were five times more likely to die from being hit by a car each time they went out than those age 21 to 29.The focus is usually on older drivers as a danger to themselves and other drivers, said Jonathan Rolison, who led the study at the University of Plymouth in the UK.But, he added, the real issue isnt really safeguarding older drivers, its making the road environment safer for pedestrians.There has been a shift in recent years in both the UK and the U.S. toward more demanding license renewal processes for older adults.As eyesight and cognitive abilities decrease with age, older adults are often assumed to be more dangerous on the road than younger drivers.But previous research suggests thats not necessarily the case. In one U.S. study, researchers found male drivers were less of a risk to other road users at 70 years old than they were at 40.For the new study, Rolison and his colleagues reviewed UK police records on all fatal road accidents reported between 1989 and 2009.They found the risk of dying behind the wheel was similar for older adult drivers and young people every time they got in the car: 13 in 100 million driving trips ended in fatality among those under 29, compared to 14 in 100 million trips for people over 70.The elderly still accounted for fewer driver deaths overall. In 2009, when 1,138 people died behind the wheel, one in 10 was over age 70, while younger drivers accounted for one in four of those deaths.The pattern held for passengers, too, with no difference in fatalities per trip for old and young passengers.For both drivers and passengers, risks were highest at both ends of the age spectrum and dipped among middle-aged people.But when the researchers looked at figures for pedestrians, they found the risk of being killed when traveling on foot was five times higher for older people than for the young. Among older adults, 23 trips in every 100 million were fatal.Older adults accounted for 37 percent of all pedestrian deaths in 2009, according to results published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
