Car Technology and Aging

Recently, a good friend of mine got into a car accident in which the driver that hit him was a 92 year old man driving with an expired license. I started wondering if there is technology and systems that are being implemented to prevent risky driving and promote safe driving among the elderly people. During a time in which automakers from Ford, Honda, Mitsubishi, etc. are targeting the younger driver, these automakers are striving to bring in maximum safety with their revolutionary equipment and technology. However, what these automakers are failing to do is to remember to keep in mind that their needs to be enticement and technology geared towards the older adults too. Liss and McGuckin argue in their article that statistics show that older adults are more likely to keep driving their older cars as they grow older, avoiding these new and more safety conscious cars--leading to a higher rate of car accidents amongst older adults due to higher use of of older vehicles (2005). Naturally, as technology advances, we have a higher rate of mobility, which leads to older adults driving more frequently. Some technological advancements that Liss and McGuckin suggested include larger signboards, brighter lighting, the introduction of left-turn lanes, etc. In 2008, Galluzzo of the University of Iowa reported that a grant was given by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to the National Advanced Driving Simulator (NADS) to study and create an in-vehicle piece  of assistive technology designed to warn the elderly about oncoming accidents, red-light violations, intersection turn-taking, etc. Band and Perel introduce the latest technology in cars including night vision enhancement and lane departure assistance, just to name two important safety features that have been helping both the young and the elderly. Night vision enhancement is the use of far-infrared waves to procure a higher resolution image of the road conditions ahead. Lane departure assistance is a system that warns the driver when the computer senses that the vehicle is departing from its intended lane (2007). These preemptive measures measures are significan contributions to help the aging community. As the aging process progresses, learning and reaction time slows down significantly. This often causes elderlies stress when they are driving, because they are unable to react as fast to road changes. Much of our lectures have shown us that as the population of elderlies increase, the need for government to provide and implement social systems to help these elderly individuals becomes an increasingly important issue. Thus, implementing better and safer technology in cars for elderly people is very integral to this development of better social systems.      

References
Band, D., & Perel, M. (2007). New vehicle technologies may help older drivers [Electronic version]. Public Roads, 71 (3), 10-21. Retrieved on 25 February 2012 from ProQuest database.

Galluzzo, G. (2008). Study to examine older drivers and assistive technology [Electronic version]. University of Iowa News Release. Retrieved on 25 February 2012 from ProQuest database.

McGuckin, N., & Liss, S. (2005). Aging cars, aging drivers: important findings from the national household travel survey [Electronic version]. Institute of Transportation Engineers. ITE Journal, 75 (9), 30-35. Retrieved on 25 February 2012 from ProQuest database.