Forty percent of the fatal collisions of people 70 and older, compared with 23% of the crashes of 35-54 year olds, occur at intersections and involve other vehicles. What mistakes are leading older motorists to get into intersection crashes? After studying 200 intersection crashes involving 3 age groups of drivers, age 70-79, age 80+, and 35-54  and talking to those older drivers who caused the crash the main reason found was that the older drivers fail to yield. The older the driver the higher the percentage of the cause was failure to yield. This is shown with these statistics; 26% for the 35 to 54 year olds, 37% for the 70 – 79 year olds and 58% for the 80+ drivers .

The 35 to 54 year old said the cause of the intersection crash was because they became distracted. The 70 -79 group said they saw the potentially conflicting vehicles but misjudged whether there was time to proceed. The 80+ group said they were looking but simply didn’t see the conflict. Mr. McCartt, the author of the study, said that the failure to see other vehicles “may be due to increase in vision impairment, which escalates rapidly after 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. Whatever the reason for the intersection crashes, those involving failure to yield occurred most often where traffic is controlled by stop signs than at intersections controlled by signal lights.

A 2002 study by the University of Kentucky found that each advancing year of age after 65 increases by 8% the odds of getting in a crash that involves turning left. Some ideas that might help include more roundabouts, and adding more green arrows for left turns.

Seniordrivers.org is a website portal for senior drivers, their families, researchers, and alternative transportation providers.
http://www.seniordrivers.org/home/

Safety Tips, Warning Signs, and Knowing When to Stop http://helpguide.org/elder/senior_citizen_driving.htm

Questions and Answers about senior driving
http://www.iihs.org/research/qanda/older_people.html