Overly cautious and dangerous: an empirical evidence of the older driver stereotypes

Age is more than just a number: The relationship among age, non-chronological age factors, self-perceived driving abilities, and autonomous vehicle acceptance

Globally, adults aged 65 and older are a rapidly-growing population. Aging is associated with declines in perceptual, cognitive, and physical abilities, which often creates challenges in completing daily activities, such as driving. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) promise to provide older adults one way to maintain their mobility and independence. However, recent surveys of AV acceptance suggest that older adults have a lower AV acceptance compared to younger generations. One challenge is that most of these assessments have not accounted for the various non-chronological age factors that contribute to how older adults perceive their own driving skills and the utility of AVs. To fill this research gap, this study investigated the effects of non-chronological age factors and rated self-perceived driving abilities on AV acceptance across three age groups. An online survey was conducted using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), for which 438 valid responses were received. Respondents were categorized into a younger (18-40 years), middle-aged (41-64 years), and older (65-79 years) adult age group. Results showed that drivers of a younger age, with higher educational attainment, who rated themselves to have higher social support, and who have lower rated self-perceived driving abilities, report being more willing to accept AVs. Findings from this work can help to inform models of AV technology acceptance and guide in the development of marketing strategies to promote knowledge of AVs.

Older women: How do they feel while driving and what about the effects of age-and-gender stereotype threat?

Older female drivers could be considered victims of negative stereotypes for two reasons-being a woman and belonging to the older category-but there are no studies specifically in this double context. Two psychosocial questionnaires were created, one assessing the perception of driving abilities in different contexts (PDADC); the second, the perception of the attributes of driving (PAD) with a box for the activation of the stereotype threat. A population of 98 women, aged 65 years or older, comprised the experimental and control groups (quasi-experimental design). This study provides knowledge about the driving feelings of this population who appears, globally, as comfortable at the wheel and "immune" to stereotyping.

Speeding and Speed Modification of Older Drivers: Does Vehicle Type Make a Difference?

The purpose of this study was to examine whether vehicle type based on size (car vs. other = truck/van/SUV) had an impact on the speeding, acceleration, and braking patterns of older male and female drivers (70 years and older) from a Canadian longitudinal study. The primary hypothesis was that older adults driving larger vehicles (e.g., trucks, SUVs, or vans) would be more likely to speed than those driving cars. Participants (n = 493) had a device installed in their vehicles that recorded their everyday driving. The findings suggest that the type of vehicle driven had little or no impact on per cent of time speeding or on the braking and accelerating patterns of older drivers. Given that the propensity for exceeding the speed limit was high among these older drivers, regardless of vehicle type, future research should examine what effect this behaviour has on older-driver road safety.

Aging, effort, and stereotyping: The evidence for the moderating role of self-involvement

A study with young and older adults (N = 91) investigated the effect of self-involvement on stereotyping tendency and effort mobilization. We hypothesized that the impact of self-involvement varies as a function of age: increased self-involvement should lead older adults to engage in more effortful information processing and decreased stereotyping, whereas increased self-involvement should have no impact on effort mobilization and stereotyping tendency in young adults. Young and older adults read narratives under low and high-self-involvement conditions before performing a recognition test that measured their stereotyping tendency. Effort was assessed as cardiovascular responses. We found that older adults in the high-self-involvement condition presented low stereotyping tendency (similar to that of young people) in comparison to older adults in the low-self-involvement condition. Furthermore, older adults in the high-self-involvement condition had decreased high-frequency heart rate variability in comparison to the other conditions, but only during the recognition test; this suggests increased effort mobilization. These findings indicate that self-involvement decreases older adults' stereotyping tendency, possibly through effort mobilization.

Enhancing Older Drivers' Safety: On Effects Induced by Stereotype Threat to Older Adults' Driving Performance, Working Memory and Self-Regulation

In a study concerned with driving behaviors of older drivers (mean age 70 years) in a driving simulator, our findings indicate that telling older drivers that they are more at risk of accidents because of their age and their driving performance-related decline (i.e., exposing them to a stereotype threat concerning older drivers) severely impairs their self-regulatory skills. Moreover, our results show that this is at least partly due to exhaustion of the executive resources (older drivers under stereotype threat tended to contradict the stereotype of being slow by driving faster), appearing also through working memory overload (older drivers under stereotype threat performed markedly less well in a modular arithmetic task than drivers in the control condition). We thus complete the existing evidence that older drivers’ performance may be affected by socially-grounded factors, suggesting that simply being investigated may be enough to tax many capabilities in older people. We also propose that stereotype threat might be at least a partial explanation for why older drivers sometimes have poorer self-regulation performances after attending rehabilitation programs designed to make older drivers safer ones.

Driving Simulator Training Is Associated with Reduced Inhibitory Workload in Older Drivers

Background: In demanding cognitive tasks, older people mostly experience more problems than younger people, and their brain workload is higher. An overloaded or exhausted mental workload is frequently associated with unsafe driving behavior. In this paper, we hypothesize that 10 active training sessions in a driving simulator positively influence brain workload, which relates to a beneficial increase in on-road driving performance. Methods: Ninety-one healthy active drivers (62–87 years) were randomly assigned to: (a) a driving simulator-training group; (b) an attention-training group; or (c) a control group. The dependent variables of this training study were brain workload (theta Fz/alpha Pz), and performance in three tasks, for which inhibition of inadequate responses (Stroop, Negative Priming, and Flanker) is required. Seventy-seven participants (85% of the total sample) completed the training. Training gains were analyzed by using a multiple regression analysis with planned comparisons. Results: The results revealed that the driving simulator training reduced brain workload during performance of the inhibition tasks. The performance of the simulator group during the inhibition tasks did not improve, but the participants completed the tasks with less brain workload compared to the attention-training group. Conclusion: Adding to our first paper on the Drive-Wise project, this paper now focuses on the superiority of the driving simulator training, compared to attention-training in regards to reducing brain workload. The change in brain workload seems to be associated with a positive change in drivers’ behavior on the road. Hence, a driving simulator training lasting only ten sessions leads to beneficial neuroplastic changes. This demonstrates brain plasticity of older people and its possible positive influence in real driving behavior.

The influence of speed, cyclists' age, pedaling frequency, and observer age on observers' time to arrival judgments of approaching bicycles and e-bikes

Given their potential to reach higher speed levels than conventional bicycles, the growing market share of e-bikes has been the reason for increased concerns regarding road safety. Previous studies have shown a clear relationship between object approach speed and an observers' judgment of when the object would reach a predefined position (i.e., time to arrival, TTA), with higher speed resulting in longer TTA estimates. Since TTA estimates have been linked to road users' decisions of whether or not to cross or turn in front of approaching vehicles, the higher potential speeds of e-bikes might result in an increased risk for traffic conflicts. The goal of the two experiments presented in this paper was to examine the influence of speed and a variety of other factors on TTA estimation for conventional bicycles and for e-bikes. In both experiments, participants from two age groups (20-45 years old and 65 years or older) watched video sequences of bicycles approaching at different speeds (15-25km/h) and were asked to judge the TTA at the moment the video was stopped. The results of both experiments showed that an increase in bicycle approach speed resulted in longer TTA estimates (measured as the proportion of estimated TTA relative to actual TTA) for both bicycle types (ηp(2)Exp.1=.489, ηp(2)Exp.2=.705). Compared to younger observers, older observers provided shorter estimates throughout (Exp. I: MDiff=0.35, CI [0.197, 0.509], ηp(2)=.332, Exp. II: MDiff=0.50, CI [.317, 0.682], ηp(2)=.420). In Experiment I, TTA estimates for the conventional bicycle were significantly shorter than for the e-bike (MDiff=0.03, CI [.007, 0.044], ηp(2)=.154), as were the estimates for the elder cyclist compared to the younger one (MDiff=0.05, CI [.025, 0.066], ηp(2)=.323). We hypothesized that the cause for this effect might lie in the seemingly reduced pedaling effort for the e-bike as a result of the motor assistance it provides. Experiment II was able to show that a high pedaling frequency indeed resulted in shorter TTA estimates compared to a low one (MDiff=0.07, CI [0.044, 0.092], ηp(2)=.438). Our findings suggest that both the e-bikes' potential to reach higher speeds and the fact that they reduce the perceived cycling effort increase the risk of TTA misjudgments by other road users.

Investigating the risk factors associated with pedestrian injury severity in Illinois

INTRODUCTION

Pedestrians are known as the most vulnerable road users, which means their needs and safety require specific attention in strategic plans. Given the fact that pedestrians are more prone to higher injury severity levels compared to other road users, this study aims to investigate the risk factors associated with various levels of injury severity that pedestrians experience in Illinois.

METHOD

Ordered-response models are used to analyze single-vehicle, single-pedestrian crash data from 2010 to 2013 in Illinois. As a measure of net change in the effect of significant variables, average direct pseudo-elasticities are calculated that can be further used to prioritize safety countermeasures. A model comparison using AIC and BIC is also provided to compare the performance of the studied ordered-response models.

RESULTS

The results recognized many variables associated with severe injuries: older pedestrians (more than 65years old), pedestrians not wearing contrasting clothing, adult drivers (16-24), drunk drivers, time of day (20:00 to 05:00), divided highways, multilane highways, darkness, and heavy vehicles. On the other hand, crossing the street at crosswalks, older drivers (more than 65years old), urban areas, and presence of traffic control devices (signal and sign) are associated with decreased probability of severe injuries.

CONCLUSIONS AND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

The comparison between three proposed ordered-response models shows that the partial proportional odds (PPO) model outperforms the conventional ordered (proportional odds-PO) model and generalized ordered logit model (GOLM). Based on the findings, stricter rules to address DUI driving is suggested. Educational programs need to focus on older pedestrians given the increasing number of older people in Illinois in the upcoming years. Pedestrians should be educated to use pedestrian crosswalks and contrasting clothing at night. In terms of engineering countermeasures, installation of crosswalks where pedestrian activity is high seems a promising practice.

"The closer you get …": age, attitudes and self-serving evaluations about older drivers

The present study investigates the attitudes of older drivers and road safety measures with a particular focus on self-serving evaluations. Driving capacity is considered here as an indicator of awareness of age-related changes that may lead to a higher risk of self-stereotyping, motivating self-serving evaluations with advancing age. In order to test this notion, we used the perceived distance between one's chronological age and the age assigned to the social categories of "older driver" and "old person" as an indicator of age-group dissociation or identification, respectively. Self-serving evaluations were expected depending on the distance between chronological and subjective age estimates. In addition to this, we tested gender and age effects on the specific evaluations. A sample of 350 participants aged 19-88 completed an online questionnaire on negative and positive stereotypes about older drivers and road safety measures. Results indicated in general a more positive than negative view of older drivers; approval with measures to increase road safety by regulating older drivers was comparatively low. Female participants tended to agree more with negative stereotypes and regulative measures than male participants. Regression analyses revealed as well that increasing chronological age was associated with less agreement with negative stereotypes and measures for road safety. Differences between chronological age and subjective age estimates of when a person is old or an old driver were differentially related with the criteria. The closer the chronological age and subjective age estimates were the lower was the agreement with negative stereotypes and measures to regulate road safety. Findings underline in general that road safety enhancing efforts should avoid highlighting chronological age as the sole driving risk factor to circumvent negative stereotyping with ageing and unjustified driving cessation.

The influence of aging on outgroup stereotypes: the mediating role of cognitive and motivational facets of deficient flexibility

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The current study was designed to examine previously reported findings about age-related changes in drawing stereotypic inferences; specifically, that older adults are more likely than younger adults to stereotype outgroup members. The study replicates previous research and extends it by exploring the cognitive and motivational facets of deficient flexibility underlying this effect and comparing stereotypes towards ingroup and outgroup members.

METHODS

In the experiment, younger and older adults read stories that allowed for stereotypic inferences. They also completed the Trail Making Test (TMT) and Need for Closure Scale (NFC) as cognitive and motivational measures of deficient flexibility.

RESULTS

The results of the experiment revealed that, compared to younger participants, older adults were more likely to rely upon stereotypic inferences when they read a story about outgroup members; however, there were no age-group differences in using stereotypes when they read a story about ingroup members. In addition, the findings showed that making more stereotypical inferences by older versus younger adults in relation to outgroup members was mediated by cognitive (TMT) and motivational (NFC) facets of deficient flexibility.

CONCLUSION

A major implication of these findings is that both cognitive and motivational facets of deficient flexibility contribute to the reliance of older adults on stereotypes compared with younger adults. However, this is only true when older adults process information about outgroup members, but not about ingroup members. Thus, the current research goes beyond previous results by providing direct evidence that ingroup-outgroup perception contributes to stereotyping among older participants.

The Impact of Age Stereotypes on Older Adults’ Hazard Perception Performance and Driving Confidence

This study examined the effect of age-stereotype threat on older adults’ performance on a task measuring hazard perception performance in driving. The impact of age-stereotype threat in relation to the value participants placed on driving and pre- and post-task confidence in driving ability was also investigated. Eighty-six adults aged from 65 years of age completed a questionnaire measuring demographic information, driving experience, self-rated health, driving importance, and driving confidence. Prior to undertaking a timed hazard perception task, participants were exposed to either negative or positive age stereotypes. Results showed that age-stereotype threats, while not influencing hazard perception performance, significantly reduced post-driving confidence compared with pre-driving confidence for those in the negative prime condition. This finding builds on the literature that has found that stereotype-based influences cannot simply be understood in terms of performance outcomes alone and may be relevant to factors affected by confidence such as driving cessation decisions.

The impact of Stereotype Threat on the simulated driving performance of older drivers

Older drivers are perceived as being dangerous and overly cautious by other drivers. We tested the hypothesis that this negative stereotype has a direct influence on the performance of older drivers. Based on the Stereotype Threat literature, we predicted that older driving performance would be altered after exposure to a Stereotype Threat. Sixty-one older drivers aged 65 and above completed a simulated driving assessment course. Prior to testing, half of the participants were told that the objective of the study was to investigate why older adults aged 65 and above were more implicated in on-road accidents (Stereotype Threat condition) and half were showed a neutral statement. Results confirmed that exposure to the threat significantly altered driving performance. Older adults in the Stereotype Threat condition made more driving mistakes than those in the control group. Interestingly, under a Stereotype Threat condition, older adults tended to commit more speeding infractions. We also observed that domain identification (whether driving is deemed important or not) moderated the impact of the threat. Taken together, these results support recent older drivers' performance models suggesting that the interaction between individual and social factors need to be considered when examining older drivers' performance.