Abstract
Background: There are currently 31 million licensed drivers (or 15% of all licensed drivers) over the age of 65. This number is expected to grow rapidly as the elderly population is predicted to double by 2030. With this impending increase of elderly drivers and their higher susceptibility to physical and mental deterioration, it is important to consider their safety as well as the safety of others on the road. State laws vary significantly as to elderly license renewal periods and renewal requirements, which could be particularly important in assessing elderly drivers’ continued ability to drive. We looked at the duration of license renewal in several states and compared elderly driver crash statistics among states with short and long renewal periods.Methods: 2009 accident data from the NHTSAwas collected and sorted with respect to age and state. Total population estimates, again sorted by age and state, were also collected from the US Census Bureau. The data sets were then compiled to create elderly accident ratios by state and compared to data on license renewal duration (RD). By performing t-tests on data stratified by different RDs, the relationship between state licensing periods and elderly driving characteristics was assessed. Results: When comparing RD to crash rates, only a renewal period of 2 years is associated with lower crash rates (p1⁄4 0.028) among the elderly. The crash rates for these states vary from 55 to 177 crashes per million elderly drivers. The five safest states for elderly drivers (DC, HI,MA, CT, andNY) have variable RDs (2-8 years). The worst 5 states for elderly drivers involved in crashes (MS, AK, MT, KY, and ND) all havemedian license RDs of 4 to 5 years.Conclusions: Frequent renewal (2 years) is associated with a reduction in elderly crashes in our analysis using state level data. However, some of the safest elderly driving states are MA and NY, with 5and 8-year renewal durations respectively. A license renewal period of more than 2 years does not seem to be a efficient predictor of elderly driving crash rates when looking at all 50 states.
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