Unpacking older drivers’ maneuver at intersections: Their visual-motor coordination and underlying neuropsychological mechanisms

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2018.05.025Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Visual-motor coordination (VMC) at intersections is challenging for older drivers.

  • VMC was modelled with multiple parameters of visual search and vehicle control.

  • Participants performed a battery of neuropsychological tests related to driving.

  • 38 older drivers were ranked in the performance of VMC at intersection manoeuvre.

  • Selective attention, spatial ability and executive function predicted well for VMC.

Abstract

Background

Negotiating intersections is one of the principal concerns for older drivers as it requires precision and efficiency in visual-motor coordination (VMC). The complex intersection manoeuvre places high demands on visual perception, attention, motor control and executive functioning. Understanding the relationship between VMC and cognitive abilities in older drivers is important, but yet to be systematically explored.

Methods

We recorded 38 older adults’ driving manoeuvre at intersections using eye tracking and advanced surveying positioning technologies. VCM performance of the participants were indexed using multiple parameters of visual and motor behaviors with a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. Participants also performed a battery of cognitive tests of visual attention, spatial abilities, visual-motor speed and executive functions.

Results

Significant correlations were identified between VMC performance and eight cognitive measurements: UFOV 2 and 3, Block Design, Benton’s JLO, D-KEFS TMT 1, 2, 3 and 4. Cognitive tests measuring selective attention, spatial ability and executive function were found to be the best predictors for VMC performance.

Conclusions

Specific cognitive abilities in older drivers were associated with poorer VMC at intersections. VMC assessment can be used to identify risky older drivers and their problematic behaviors. In the future, tailored VMC evaluations and intervention programs may be developed to improve older drivers’ safety behind the wheel.

Section snippets

Background

The older population around the world is rapidly increasing (Matas, Nettelbeck, & Burns, 2014), as is the complexity of the traffic environment. Several studies have revealed a rising rate of car crashes in older drivers, aged 65 years and older (Evans, 1988, Fildes, 2006, Rakotonirainy et al., 2012). There was also an over-representation of older drivers in merging collisions, and in crashes at intersections, while turning and when changing lanes (Clarke et al., 2010, Marmeleira et al., 2012,

Participants

Data were collected for 38 older drivers (age 60–81, M = 68.65, SD = 5.92; 19 males and 19 females) from Perth, Western Australia. Participants were eligible for inclusion if they held a valid full driver's license; drove at least three times per week in the recent months, and reported no mental health or physical impairments that could impact their driving performance. Preliminary screening on vision and cognitive conditions was conducted for all participants to ensure compliance with

VMC performance at intersections in older drivers

By applying the DEA model, an overall index score for each driver was calculated based on multiple visual search and vehicle control parameters. The overall visual-motor coordination performance of participants is shown in Supplementary 6. It can be seen that Driver 26 (aged 68) performed best. The visual-motor coordination dataset (Supplementary 4) shows that the driver demonstrated relatively high fixation frequency per manoeuvre time (5.83/s), resulting in a low MLP (0.14 m) and SDLP

Discussion and conclusion

The results showed that the VMC assessment is able to identify under-performing drivers and their problematic visual, motor behaviors. Eye fixation frequency was lower in participants with lower VMC index, which resulted in poor lane maintenance performance. The lower VMC scores also reflected the inadequate traffic relevant fixations performed by participants during intersection manoeuvres.

However, the primary objective of this study was to determine which tests, from a clinical battery, were

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the GNSS Research Centre, Curtin University for providing base station reference data; thank the eye tracking analysis team from the School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work, Curtin University, for analysing eye tracking data; and thank the support from MOE (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China) Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation (Grant No. 16YJA840007).

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