Elderly Driving Accidents

Have you been involved in an accident with an elderly person? Older drivers do have a higher crash risk in some conditions and locations. Older drivers are more likely than other age groups to have crashes at intersections, when making left turns and on limited access highways when merging, exiting, or changing lanes.

Contact our New York Traffic Lawyer to help you with your elderly driving accident!

Some common areas of difficulty for elderly driving include:

• Yielding
• Responding to signs and signals
• Scanning the roadway environment
• Staying in their lane
• Keeping up with the flow of traffic
• Passing and stopping

NOTE: Because of these physical changes, older adults often are slower to react to objects outside of their central focus.

Vision Changes and Improving Roadway Visibility
What actually happens to a person's eyes as they age? Two of the key changes occur in the lens, which focuses light on the retina. The lens becomes less flexible and yellows with age. The reductions in flexibility make it harder to shift focus from a near object to a far object. In fact, presbyopia, or nearsightedness, is a common age-related visual change. The yellowing of the eye lens and other changes cause older adults to need more light to see. Although they benefit from additional lighting, they also are more susceptible to glare and require significantly more time to recover from it. One of the major consequences of these and other vision changes is that it is harder for older people to see at night.

Musculoskeletal Function and Improving Intersections
People may move more slowly with age. Some older adults experience loss of limb strength, flexibility, sensitivity, and/or range of motion, or reduced ability to rotate the head and neck. Such changes may be the result of simple joint inflammation and deterioration (arthritis), muscle atrophy or paralysis related to stroke, or other problems. Chronic illnesses, such as coronary artery disease, heart failure and emphysema can greatly restrict and slow physical activity and mobility. General flexibility and head movements in particular are necessary to physically operate a motor vehicle, particularly for merging, lane positioning, and parking.

Do You Know?
By the year 2030, one in five Americans will be age 65 or older. The fastest growing segment of the U.S. population is people more than 85 years of age. Every year, a growing portion of those who use the Nation's roads and sidewalks are older adults.

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