The New York Times published an article a couple of weeks ago, Older Drivers Hit the Road for Uber and Lyft, reporting on the “growing number of older Americans who are driving for Uber or its competitor Lyft (not launched in Australia to date) to augment their retirement income.”
“Drivers are in such demand that last July, Uber and Life Reimagined, (a subsidiary of AARP), the organisation for people over 50, formed a partnership to recruit more people as drivers.
“They are trying to tap into the 50-and-older work force, a segment that is growing steadily, according to an AARP report released last year,” the story by Elizabeth Olsen reported.
It struck me as interesting in the light of the headlines we see so regularly in Australia, painting ‘senior drivers’ as a clear and present danger to the whole community.
Major insurance company, QBE courted controversy and got it in November last year when they proposed an “S-plates” scheme for seniors— similar to learner and probationary licences — in a bid to restrict the movements of older motorists. Under the ‘opt-in system’ they floated, drivers would obtain scores from black box-style devices in their cars which they could voluntarily submit to roads and traffic authorities in lieu of medical tests and driving exams.
Six days into 2016 – always a slow time for news – the subject was back in the headlines. New South Wales police assistant commissioner responsible for traffic and highway patrol, John Hartley, pronounced that drivers aged over 70 are two-and-a-half times more likely to be killed in car accidents than younger people and should be seriously reassessing whether they are fit to get behind the wheel.
Unsurprisingly, once again, the ensuing debate turned to ageism (competency is competency – it doesn’t have an age limit) and a battle for statistical supremacy as different interests presented their cases.
The battle for statistical supremacy
Unfortunately, there is a lot of conflicting or unclear data on the subject, as organisations like COTA and National Seniors have pointed out, but they’re not the only ones.
The data leading to calls for concern by police in NSW and Victoria, as well as WA recently, was based on reported deaths in road accidents.
As WA-based chairman of National Seniors Australia, David Carvosso, pointed out to WA Today last November, “the data doesn’t reveal who was the cause of the accidents or whether people killed were drivers, passengers or pedestrians.”
At the same time, he said “that fatalities involving older people occurred for a range of reasons, not just their age.”
Mr Carvosso said that deaths occurred as much from the fact that older people were more susceptible to injury or worse in an accident, a point readily acknowledged by medical commentators too.
“An accident that might impact a younger or a middle-aged person could have a different impact on an older person – it could be far more significant,” he said.
The point of the exercise
To really make it meaningful, we would need to look at a whole lot more figures and types of data. How many total licenced drivers are there in each different age bracket? What is the relationship between the raw numbers of licenced drivers in each group and the driver fatalities?
But that’s not enough either of course. As medical commentators and others point out, as people get older (and not even very old), they are more likely to have health and medical conditions which can put them at greater risk of death in a range of contexts, whether driving, walking the dog, or shopping at the supermarket.
The advocacy group for older people, COTA, recently issued a response in South Australia to local media headlines that “Seniors Shouldn’t be Driving,” putting it well:
“We are again seeing statistics being used to take a wild swipe at a problem whose causes and solutions require much better understanding. The recommendation is the latest in a string of proposed measures, including so-called S plates and mandatory testing for drivers of a certain age, that use age as a blunt instrument.
“We are an ageing community and that means there are more older drivers on the road. Most are competent drivers who value their freedom and use it well as citizens of our community. People over 70 are not an homogenous group. Fitness to drive should be based on competence and not age.
“We would be much better off concentrating on developing road safety strategies that include education, investment in technology that increases car and road safety, learning from countries that do it well and understanding the real facts about road safety.”
Smarter approaches
This is the real point. Fitness to drive is about competence, not age, and any suggestion to publicly identify drivers, purely on the basis of age, is not only a blunt instrument but a flagrantly ageist one.
Professor Andrew Parkes, Head of the Centre for Mobility & Transport at the University of Coventry in the UK, recently wrote:
“In future, there will be far more older drivers, driving more often and in a much wider range of traffic conditions.
“It is a mistake to think that the future older driver population will have the same characteristics as today – age and gender profiles will change, as will health issues, social networks, economic capabilities and mobility expectations.
“Driving will be increasingly important to quality of life and social inclusion for the older population – even at reduced mileage levels, people will wish to keep driving licences into their 80’s, 90’s and even 100’s far more than today.
“New technologies open up huge potential for supporting older drivers – both in the control of the vehicle and also in information and tailored services that can prolong and enhance their mobility and social inclusion.
“The UK can be at the forefront of thinking about innovation for the older driving population – this includes new vehicle types and assistance systems, new hazard perception and skills training, new insurance purchasing and leasing models, new systems to help drivers self-calibrate their performance, new research in physiology, neuroscience and socio-economics.
“The current picture is changing, quite quickly, and we need to think ahead, now. The older drivers deserve to have their safety,” he concluded.
Why can’t Australian ‘experts’ stop doing what they’ve always done and be part of that innovative solution? Like Uber has.
—— SOME EXTRA INFORMATION IF YOU ARE INTERESTED ——
What the death stats show
I took a look at the Australian Road Deaths Database which provides basic details of road transport crash fatalities in Australia as reported by police each month to their respective State and Territory road safety authorities.
This database provides details including the circumstances of the crash – for example, date, location, crash type – and some details regarding the persons killed – for example, age, gender and ‘road user’ group.
The ‘road user’ group includes drivers, passengers, motorcycle riders, bicyclists (including pillion passengers) and pedestrians.
According to this database, there was a total of 1,209 fatalities related to road transport accidents across Australia in 2015. Of those total fatalities – across all the road user groups – 326 (or 27 per cent), were people aged 60 or over. Looking at people aged 70 and over, there were 211 overall fatalities (or 17 percent of the total across all ages).
Drilling down
However, looking more closely at the breakdown in these older age groups, the picture looks a bit different.
Of those 326 fatalities aged 60 and over, just under half (162) of those were people who were driving. 25 per cent were pedestrians; 18 per cent were passengers; and the rest were riding – or a pillion passenger on – a motorcycle or bicycle.
Honing in on the 211 total fatalities involving people 70 and over, again less than half of them (101 or 48 per cent) were behind the wheel. 55 (26 per cent) were pedestrians; 46 (22 per cent) were passengers. The remaining nine deaths were made up of bicyclists (6) and motorcyclists (3) who may have been pillion passengers.
Drilling down another layer, of the total 1209 road accident related fatalities in 2015, only 560 of them were actually driving cars, made up of:
- 281 people (50 per cent) aged 26-59
- 115 people (21 per cent) aged 17-25
- 162 people (29 per cent) aged 60 or over.
Narrowing it down to driver fatalities aged 70 or over, the number is 101 or 18 per cent.
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Self-identified key challenges of NSW roads and traffic police
If you’re interested, this is a presentation from Assistant Commissioner of Police in NSW, John Hartley last year, giving an overview of the traffic police key issues and challenges and future directions. Not one mention of ageing or elderly drivers. Nothing about age at all.
