Siniestrality on drivers older than 65. Survey of cases

Abstract

The results of a 22 sample population case survey carried out on drivers older than 65 who were involved in traffic accidents, reveal deterioration related to the process of aging in areas such as:Peripherical vision, distributed attention, task performance slowness, learned patterns applied automatically, etc. From this age on, the aforementioned effects of aging are made up for by adopting protection measures such us, high use of seat belts, driving through very well known road stretches, which are to be performed in the best of climate and luminosity conditions while avoiding congestion situations in traffic. The drivers object of this survey contributed to accident occurrence, rather than by omission than by commission and thus, high carefulness levels were observed at the time of taking decisions (in example while entering a junction) decisions that at the time of being translated into actions are performed without reflection, which leads to not include in their stimular field those events unforeseeable to them. These and other characteristics reported the limitations on distributed attention or of automatic repetition to certain extent that is to say, those operating ways in which the energy available is saved to the full and always running by channels which are known so as to avoid any conflict with the element. Taking in a metaphoric way the expression voiced by some authors, according to which they run on a “low revolution basis”, which could be understood as certain slowness while in traffic.