Elder Care: Seniors Are Generally Safe Drivers

While their sight might not be as good and their reflexes a little slow, senior drivers are generally safe and certainly safer than their much younger counterparts. In fact, according to researchers at the Rand Institute for Social Justice, young drivers between the ages of 15 and 24 years old are three times as likely to cause car accidents as senior citizens. From Reuters Health:

Drivers up to age 24 represented 13 percent of drivers, but caused 43 percent of the accidents across the United States, they said. Senior drivers were only 16 percent more likely to cause an accident than drivers between the ages of 25 and 64.

"(There is) pretty widespread public concern about the safety of older drivers," said David Loughran, an economist at RAND who worked on the study.

"Over the past 20 years, there been a strong trend to adopt more stringent licensing policies," he added. "The fact that older drivers are not that much riskier suggests that these policies are certainly questionable."

Despite being safer, when senior drivers are in an accident they are far more likely to sustain serious injury than younger drivers and are "nearly seven times more likely than other adult drivers to be killed if they do have an accident."

The reason for the lower accident rate is believed to be because older drivers are playing it safe when they drive, avoiding driving at night, and avoiding dangerous conditions.