Soon thereafter, Holly Tuokko, director of the University of Victoria’s Centre on Aging was quoted as saying that legislation requiring medical exams for 80-year-old drivers—such as in BC and Ontario—and “newspaper reports that over-emphasize collisions involving older drivers, and stereotypes that suggest all seniors are potential threats behind the wheel, contribute to an overall negative public sense of senior drivers.”  She characterized age-based compulsory medical exam laws as “ageist” and noted that if the nub of the issue is medical conditions, compulsory medical exams should actually begin at 40, the typical age for the onset of age-related medical disqualifications for driving.

 

Fitness to drive involves a basic set of cognitive, motor, and visual skills.  Generally speaking, younger drivers crash because of inexperience, bad judgment, and risk-taking behaviour.  The reasonable expectation, however, is that as they gain experience and maturity they will become safer drivers.  Aging drivers are on a different trajectory.  Although they are experienced ‘safe drivers’ and generally do not take risks, the not unreasonable expectation is that their basic set of driving-fitness skills is diminishing.

 

This ‘different trajectory’ for aging drivers presents a three-fold problem.  First, not all aging drivers are diminishing at the same rate.  Challenging 80 years as an arbitrary and unfair decision is not without merit.  Secondly, health-care professionals charged with identifying the medical conditions and detecting the changes in cognitive functions, which include remembering, being attentive, judging, and decision-making that might disqualify an aging driver have lacked objective screening tools.  And thirdly, as the baby boomers—the biggest demographic—are entering their 60s, the number of aging drivers is mushrooming.  In 2025, one in four Canadians will be 65 years or older; by 2040 the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease in Canada will double.

 

For the past 10 years, the research community in Canada has been working on this problem by developing a screening tool called the SIMARD-MD test to assist physicians with objective decision-making about fitness to drive.  A simple five-minute written test completed in the doctor’s office, it assists with evaluating the four cognitive abilities needed for driving and determines the probability of passing or failing a road test with a high degree of accuracy.  Work on the test continues.

 

To learn more about the topic of aging drivers go to: www.candrive.ca, the website of the Canadian Driving Research Initiative for Vehicular Safety in the Elderly (Candrive), an interdisciplinary health related research program dedicated to improving the safety of older drivers.