Road Safety
Assessing Responsibility for Older Drivers Crashes
- Publication no: AP-R265-05
- ISBN: 0 85588 728 1
- Published: 13 April 2005
- PDF (free) Download
The issue of older driver crash responsibility has been explored first, through the analysis of Australian national fatality data, 1996-1999, which contain attributions of responsibility made by coroners, police or by independent data coders. Secondly, crash records from a leading Tasmanian insurance company have been linked to the Tasmanian crash database managed by the Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources (DIER), to explore patterns in crash responsibility across the two attribution sources (police and insurance assessors). Based on both the available research and the analysis conducted as part of this report, it was concluded that older drivers are around 1.5 times more likely to be judged as responsible for their crashes than other age groups. It was also concluded that older drivers additional crash responsibility, while valuable in explaining what went wrong in crashes, made only a small contribution to the overall road toll. It was consequently argued that road safety programs needed to target all older driver crashes regardless of responsibility levels if they were to achieve a meaningful impact.
- EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- 1. A Literature Review
- 1.1. Older driver safety: cause for concern?
- 1.1.1. ‘Ageing’ and the ‘Older Driver’
- 1.1.2. The Greying of Society
- 1.1.3. Older Adults’ Dependence on the Car
- 1.1.4. Functional Impairments and Driving Implications
- 1.1.5. Older Driver Compensation Strategies
- 1.1.6. Older Drivers and Crash Risk
- 1.2. Older Driver Crashes
- 1.2.1. Size of ‘the Older Driver Road Safety Problem’
- 1.2.2. Older Driver Crash Patterns
- 1.3. Responsibility for Older Drivers Crashes
- 1.3.1. Introduction
- 1.3.2. Are Older Drivers more likely to be Responsible for their Crashes?
- 1.4. Summary
- 2. An Overview of Older Driver Crash Epidemiology Based on National Fatality Data
- 2.1. Background
- 2.2. An overview of older driver fatal crash patterns
- 2.3. Some major risk and exposure factors
- 2.4. Older driver crash types
- 2.5. Who do older drivers crash into?
- 2.6. Summary
- 3. Older Drivers, Crash Responsibility and Crash Causes Based on National Fatality Data
- 3.1. Background
- 3.2. A search for possible biases in attributing responsibility for the crash
- 3.3. Are older drivers more likely to be responsible for their crashes?
- 3.4. Older driver crash causes
- 3.5. Summary
- 4. Determining Older Driver Crash Responsibility from Insurance Data
- 4.1. Introduction
- 4.2. Do the different attributions of crash responsibility agree?
- 4.3. Are older drivers more likely to be judged responsible for their crashes?
- 4.4. Key aspects of crashes for which older drivers have been judged responsible
- 4.5. Summary
- 5. Projecting ‘the Older Driver Crash Problem’
- 5.1. The Oak Ridge Study
- 5.2. Australian Fatality Predictions based on the Oak Ridge Study
- 5.3. Some background considerations in preparing the Australian predictions
- 5.4. Summary
- 6. Conclusions and Recommendations for Countermeasures
- 6.1. Conclusions
- 6.2. Recommendations for Countermeasures
- 1. A LITERATURE REVIEW
- 2. AN OVERVIEW OF THE OLDER DRIVER CRASH EPIDEMIOLOGY BASED ON NATIONAL FATALITY DATA
- 3. OLDER DRIVERS, CRASH RESPONSIBILITY AND CRASH CAUSES BASED ON NATIONAL FATALITY DATA
- 4. DETERMINING OLDER DRIVER CRASH RESPONSIBILITY FROM INSURANCE DATA
- 5. PROJECTING ‘THE OLDER DRIVER CRASH PROBLEM’
- 6. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR COUNTERMEASURES
- REFERENCES
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