Effects of Aging on Older Drivers

It's important to understand the physical and mental changes that occur with older drivers and how the effects of aging may increase our risk on the road. Driving is a complex task that requires a driver's ability to see, think and do:

  • see and hear what’s in the driving environment
  • think or process complicated information quickly
  • do by taking appropriate action to avoid crashes

Older drivers often take longer to complete each of these steps. Learning how the effects of aging can impact our driving is a critical first step in decreasing our risk as drivers.

Download and print our Mature Drivers and Aging fact sheet. [PDF]

Seeing and hearing

Good vision is essential to safe driving. We also use our hearing when we drive. What happens as we age?

  • The retina becomes less sensitive to light. More light makes it easier to drive and older drivers require significantly more light than younger drivers.
  • Our ability to change our focus starts to slow down around age 40. A driver over the age of 40 can take at least a second longer to refocus than a younger driver takes (such as when looking up from the dash to the road ahead.)
  • We become more sensitive to glare because the lenses of our eyes thicken and the pupils become smaller. A 55 year old takes eight times longer to recover from glare than a 16 year old.
  • Peripheral vision narrows and depth perception declines as we age. Depth perception is important because we use it to judge how fast other cars are moving.
  • Colours become more difficult to see — especially red, the colour of the brake lights of the car ahead that’s braking!
  • Hearing becomes less acute as we age — about one third of people over 65 and one half of those over 85 have hearing problems.

Thinking

After we see what’s happening in our driving environment, we need to process the information and decide what to do in order to avoid collisions. Experience and mature judgement are important but older drivers tend to process information more slowly.

Doing

Once a decision has been made, the driver needs to react. But, testing shows that many older drivers take longer to perform motor activities. Weaker muscles, reduced flexibility and range of motion and conditions such as arthritis make it more difficult to:

  • turn our heads
  • grip and turn the steering wheel
  • press the accelerator or brake
  • reach the controls or open windows and doors
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