Fatal Intersection Crashes More Likely to Involve Older Drivers

Fatal intersection crashes more likely to involve older drivers

Forty percent of the fatal collisions of people 70 and older compared with 23 percent of fatal crashes of 35-54 year-olds, occur at intersections and involve other vehicles, according to a recently released study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

IIHS is a nonprofit scientific and educational organization dedicated to reducing deaths, injuries and property damage on the nation’s highways. It is wholly supported by auto insurers like Unitrin Specialty.

The IIHS wanted to know what mistakes were leading a disproportionate number of older motorists to get into intersection crashes. To find out, the Institute studied intersection crashes on Connecticut roads involving more than 200 drivers in three age groups: — two groups of older drivers (70-79 years old and 80-plus) and a comparison group of 35-54 year-olds.

Among the drivers in Connecticut, rear-end crashes accounted for a lower proportion of 80-plus drivers’ intersection crashes. Both groups of older drivers had lower proportions of run-off-the road crashes than 35-54 year-olds. In contrast, failure to yield the right of way to other vehicles led to more than half of the intersection crashes for which the oldest drivers were responsible. This compares with about one-third of the intersection crashes of 70-79 year-olds and about one fourth of those involving 35-54 year-olds.

Why they crashed

Reasons for the intersection crashes varied by driver age.  People 70-79 made more evaluation errors than drivers of other ages. That is, they saw potentially conflicting vehicles but misjudged whether there was time to proceed.

Drivers in the other age groups (35-54 and 80-plus) more often failed to see potentially conflicting vehicles. The 35-54 year-olds said it was because they became distracted, while most of the drivers 80-plus said they were looking but simply didn’t see the conflict.

The IIHS said failure to see other vehicles “may be due to increases in vision impairments, which escalate rapidly after about age 75. Another factor could involve the complexity of urban intersections, with vehicles traveling in multiple directions. Older drivers may experience decreasing ability to process the multiple sources of information at once and maneuver safely.”

Range of head movement might also be a factor in older drivers’ crashes. These ranges have been found to decrease with age, which could hinder a driver’s ability to see potentially conflicting vehicles.

Whatever the reasons for the intersection crashes, those involving failure to yield occurred more often where traffic is controlled by stop signs than at intersections with signal lights  (more rear-end crashes occurred at the signals). Fifty-nine percent of the

failure-to-yield crashes occurred at stop signs, and 50 percent of these crashes occurred

while motorists were turning left. The proportions didn’t vary much across the three age groups.

Reducing the risks of older drivers

Crashes per capita are lower among older drivers than people in any other age group, mostly because fewer older people have licenses and those who do drive fewer miles.

But when older people get behind the wheel, their risk of crashing and dying is high.

A challenge is to identify problem drivers before they crash — and even if the hazardous ones can be identified, then what?

A number of approaches are being tried. For example, provisions in some states require people older than specified ages to renew their licenses more often, thus creating more frequent screening opportunities.  Such provisions apply in addition to the usual ones designed to identify drivers of all ages who no longer meet licensing standards because of physical or mental infirmities.  Officials in a few states are trying vision tests or road tests. Where these approaches have been evaluated, results are mixed.

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Older drivers tend to be involved in more fatal accidents than younger drivers.  This is due to older driver's inability to determine proximity of an incoming vehicle at an intersection