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Keep Hold of Those Car Keys: Driving May Be Good for Your Health
By
Stephen Baetge
Staff Writer
Seniors
who choose to give up their car keys prematurely may be shortening
their lives, according to the results of a research study published
in the Journals of Gerontology -- Medical Science.
The multiyear Staying Keen In Later Life (SKILL) study began in 2000, and it
involved participants living in communities in the southern United States.
University of South Florida researchers funded by the National Institute of Health
followed participants over three years studying the connection between mortality
and the cessation of driving.
The study of 660 adults aged 63 to 97 showed that people who stopped driving
were four to six times more likely to die over a three-year period than their
counterparts who still were driving.
“We knew from earlier research that cessation of driving generally leads
to bad health outcomes,” said lead investigator Jerri Edwards, Ph.D., of
the University of South Florida. “We wanted to measure whether giving up
your keys actually increased your risk of dying.”
Serious mental and physical health decline has long been predictive of driving
cessation, but in many cases seniors quit driving unnecessarily.
The link between driving cessation and mortality -- after controlling for health
status and other factors -- came as a shock to researchers.
“We were surprised that even after controlling for other factors, the analysis
showed that cessation of driving increased mortality risk by four to six times,” Dr.
Edwards explained.
The findings suggest that physicians may want to track changes in driving status
as a predictor of health issues. It also raises the possibility that keeping
a person driving may improve the quality and length of his or her life.
Seniors and their family members often struggle with the difficult issue of when
someone of advanced age should stop driving. Crash rates per-mile-driven increase
for people in their 60s and go up substantially among drivers over 70. Crash
fatality rates for drivers over age 75 are actually higher than for all teenagers,
except 16 year olds.
“Traditionally, family members are concerned about how to get older drivers
to stop driving,” said Dr. Edwards. “We now see there are also bad
consequences from driving cessation.”
Researchers believe the health and mortality declines associated with driving
cessation reflect the importance of mobility in our society in meeting social,
health care and autonomy needs.
In many areas, seniors who give up driving become housebound. The problem is
exacerbated in rural communities, which usually have little or no public transportation
available.
“People really should keep driving as long as they can do so safely,” Dr.
Edwards advised. “There is other good news on this front from the latest
studies on cognitive training and driving.”
Other data from the SKILL Study showed that older drivers who used computer-based
cognitive training were 40 percent less likely to stop driving and were able
to maintain their driving patterns more safely.
Those older drivers were trained with special computer technology designed to
increase their “useful field of view” -- the amount of visual information
that can be processed in a single glance.
Drivers who trained just 10 hours with “useful field of view” technology
have been shown to reduce their crash risk by 50 percent in a study presented
in January 2009 to the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy
of Sciences.
“Science has brought us new ways to improve and extend driving,” said
Dr. Edwards. “It does not need to be a choice between uneasiness about
continued driving and negative outcomes from driving cessation. We can now train
older drivers to drive safer and longer.”
In addition, many governmental or private organizations such as the American
Automobile Association and AARP provide safety and equipment training to keep
older drivers mobile for as long as possible.
This year, a grant totaling nearly $205,000 was awarded to the California Highway
Patrol (CHP) by the California Office of Traffic Safety in an effort to deal
with the increase and safely extend the driving years for California seniors.
“Through education and awareness presentations, we’re hoping to have
a positive safety impact on California’s senior driver population. This
whole program is about safety,” added CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow.
The CHP program plan includes a public awareness campaign using a variety of
available data to develop a working plan addressing this issue.
This page and its contents ©2009
Metropolitan News Company, Inc.
