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Today there are more older drivers on the road than ever before. According to the Federal Highway Administration, more than 202.8 million drivers were on the road in 2006, and 20 million of those drivers were 70 or older.
In fact, nearly 3 million drivers were at least eighty-five-years-old. In 2007, more than seven million drivers were at least 80, up 52 percent from 1997.
Should there be cause for concern because of the increased aging of the drivers?
The answer is no according to statistics provided by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Despite the growing number of aging seniors on the road, older drivers are involved in far fewer accidents than they were even ten years ago.
Moreover, the number of drivers age 70 and older involved in fatal car accidents has declined during the past decade, and their involvement in injury-causing car crashes has dropped by 19 percent.
The results were unexpected according to IIHS. The suspected reason for the decrease appears due to a combination of elders driving safer cars, increased usage of seat belts, and the overall better health of older drivers than in the past.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Mary // Sep 29, 2009 at 11:40 am
Personally, I think that the elderly are much better drivers than some 20 year olds. The “younger” crowd are driving will eating, chatting on the phone, texting, listening to ear piercing music and surfing the web with their I-phones. They not paying attention to the road. I think we need to get them off the road and make it safer for the rest of us.
Overall, the elderly are doing a much better job of driving.
2 Edie // Oct 1, 2009 at 2:48 pm
My soon-to-be-forty daughter was visiting this past week, and I cannot tell you how nervous I was while she was driving, talking, texting, and paying more attention to her child in the back seat than to her driving. Several times she veered across the centerline to the point where I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Really scary!