

The study’s authors credited two major factors for the improved safety record of older drivers: seniors today are healthier than in decades past, and most are operating safer vehicles. Compared to young drivers, they are less likely to drink and drive, speed, ignore road signs, drive in bad weather and drive at night. Older adults benefit from years of driving experience that usually translates into better risk assessment and the ability to navigate challenges.
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In 2017, for the first time ever, drivers 70 and older had fewer crashes reported to the police than middle-aged drivers, the institute found.

Although seniors rarely drove as far as younger drivers did, older adults had better safety records per mile driven. For middle-aged drivers, the decline in fatal accidents was half that, 21 percent. The study, published in June in the Journal of Safety Research, recorded a 43 percent drop in fatal accidents among drivers 70 and older from 1997 to 2018. A recent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that drivers aged 70 and older were less likely to be involved in a fatal car accident than those 35 to 54. The children of older drivers have worried along with them, sometimes going to extremes to commandeer the keys of their aging parents when reasoning fails to get them off the road.īut new research suggests it may be time for everyone to breathe a little easier and maybe worry instead about young drivers who, as a whole, are more likely than us old-timers to speed and multitask.Īlthough there are now more older drivers than ever before on American roads, it seems there’s never been a safer time for those in the upper decades of life to drive a car. Highway safety experts have long been concerned about a possible epidemic of accidents and fatalities as people in their 70s, 80s and beyond continued to drive.
