Source: Drivers’ risk of dying in crash triples over the age of 75 The risk of older motorists being killed or seriously injured triples after the age of 75, figures have revealed. Data from the Department for Transport (DfT) showed a sharp increase in the rate at which older car drivers were involved in serious accidents, compared with middle-aged motorists. Deaths involving over-75s significantly outnumbered those of even the most inexperienced drivers on the road, prompting calls for retests and compulsory eye tests. The figures, which charted the number of drivers killed per billion miles driven, showed how motorists were safest from the age of about 40 until their mid-sixties. It equated to about 25 drivers killed in each five-year age bracket. ... At age 76, I'm on the wrong side of this curve except: FULL SELF DRIVING! Bob Wilson
Don't get over-confident, or out over your skis on the technology. = = = = = = = = Some past figures I've seen (likely more than a decade ago), broken down by age in decade groups, showed that U.S. drivers had their lowest crash rates in their 60s, but their lowest death rates in their 40s. The most obvious initial explanation was that drivers continued to driver safer into their 60s (though possibly skewed by driving less), but after their 40s this was overtaken by their bodies getting more fragile and less able to survive and recover from injuries. As I've been getting older, I become more interested in cabin crash protection. When dad totaled one vehicle in a very obvious senior blunder, I vetoed a proposed older cheap replacement and insisted on a new model with better crash safety, on the belief that the cost of easily repairable property damage if he repeated his too-old blunder was less important than damage to his much less repairable body, so we found a one year old used car. Fortunately he voluntarily quit driving the next year, opting to have others chauffeur him in that car. And when he eventually passed in his sleep, my sister-in-law inherited a still-good car.
