Research on Older Adults’ Mobility (ROAM)
Hosted by Dr. Loren Staplin
Loren Staplin, Ph.D., founded the consulting firm TransAnalytics, LLC in 2001, and serves as its Managing Partner. He has successfully led over forty research grants and contracts, with a primary emphasis on the relationship between aging, driver functional abilities, and traffic safety, and the implications for transportation policy and practice. Among his numerous publications are the original (2001) Highway Design Handbook for Older Drivers and Pedestrians, published by the Federal Highway Administration, and two chapters in the 2004 NAS/TRB publication Transportation in an Aging Society: A Decade of Experience. He holds multiple patents, for processes to train driver visual search and scanning and to evaluate driver situational awareness. Earlier in his career, Dr. Staplin was Vice-President for Transportation Safety at the Scientex Corporation (1992-2000), a Senior Associate with Ketron, Inc. (1982-1992), and an assistant professor in experimental psychology at Lehigh University (1979-1982). Dr. Staplin is the past Chair of the Committee on Safe Mobility of Older Persons (ANB60) at the NAS/Transportation Research Board; and, past Chair of the Committee on Operator Education and Regulation (ANB30). He led the previous NHTSA-sponsored Research on Older Adults’ Mobility (ROAM) meetings in 2021-2023.
Endorsement of Driving Avoidance Behaviors and Visual, Physical, and Cognitive Predictors Among Older Drivers
Dr. Dustin Souders
Due to natural age-related changes in visual, physical, and cognitive abilities certain driving conditions become more challenging for older adults. Avoiding these hazardous driving conditions [i.e., nighttime driving, severe weather, or high-speed interstates] is one way in which drivers can compensate for the large demands these conditions pose. We conducted a secondary analysis on the driving avoidance habits of a population of 72 drivers (65 – 85 years old), considering their scores on a battery of physical (turns360, timed get up and go tests), cognitive (useful field of view, mazes, Trails B, and Wechsler memory scale tests), and visual (visual acuity, Pelli-Robson contrast sensitivity tests) health metrics. Inter-correlations between components of these health metrics and their relationship to driving avoidance scores (as a whole and individually) were compared to generate composite variables for creating a regression model predicting driving avoidance. Ultimately, gender and physical health composite scores were found to be statistically significant predictors of driving avoidance at large, while cognitive and visual health composites were not shown to be significantly related to driving avoidance. This indicates that for the study population, women tended to avoid driving more frequently than men, and those with poorer physical health tended to avoid driving more frequently than those with better physical health. The significance of these findings suggests that more emphasis be placed on physical factors contributing to driving avoidance.
Development of a Driver Licensing Application Information System – Implications for tracking renewals among senior drivers
Dr. Bayliss Camp
California DMV has just completed, under contract from the California Office of Traffic Safety, a prototype “Driver License Application Information System” (DLAIS). In brief, the DLAIS tracks, at the individual level, the number of persons who submit an original or renewal driver license application, some basic demographic characteristics of each applicant (age, gender, ZIP of residence), how long each applicant took to complete the process, and for those who were not issued a license, the reasons their application may not have been successful (e.g., vision/medical referral, drive test requirement or drive test fail, written test fail). In this presentation, California DMV R&D will present some descriptive statistics regarding older (aged 55+) original and renewal driver license applicants from a baseline year of 2021, discuss planned next steps for updating this data resource, and potential traffic safety research questions this resource makes possible. Discussion will also incorporate how this tool is expected to be used to track changes to driver license application process measures and safety outcomes attendant upon the implementation of Assembly Bill 1606, which will allow remote renewals for applicants aged 70-79 (currently required to renew in person every 5 years).
Rural Transportation for Older Adults
Alycia Bayne
Transportation is a significant challenge for rural older adults. Barriers to accessing transportation services in rural communities include long travel distances, low population density, and safety and infrastructure issues. On behalf of the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, in collaboration with the Rural Health Information Hub, NORC developed the Rural Transportation Toolkit in 2019. This web-based toolkit contains rural transportation program models and resources, based on the experiences of rural programs and practitioners. The toolkit is available at: https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/toolkits. NORC is currently updating the toolkit. This presentation will focus on models and resources that can support the development of transportation programs that meet the needs of older adults in rural communities.
ROAD TRIP Evolution – Rural Older Adult Driver Tailored Research
Dr. Jon Antin
Driving is critical to the aging population, particularly with respect to a goal that most of us share: aging in place. Rural older adults are afforded with far fewer transportation options or driving alternatives, however, at the same time they may be challenged by age-related changes in cognition, physical capability, perception, and financial status. VTTI has established a pilot program: ROAD TRIP (Rural Older Adult Driver Tailored Research-Integrated Plan), funded by the National Surface Transportation Safety Center for Excellence (NSTSCE) and the Center for Advanced Transportation Mobility (CATM) Tier 1 University Transportation Center, UTC. ROAD TRIP customizes mobility recommendations for rural older adults who have expressed concerns related to their unmet transportation needs, tailoring countermeasures to each participant based on an assessment of their unique characteristics, environment/ situation, and driving observation. Pilot participants have received this program enthusiastically and preliminary results have shown improvements in situational awareness, reduced secondary task engagement, the use of roadside pull-offs to reduce pressure from other traffic, and improved turn signal and stopping behaviors at intersections. This presentation will discuss pilot results, and efforts to evolve the ROAD TRIP program to expand its footprint and impact.
Transportation and the Social Determinants of Health for Older Adults: A Data Analysis & Longitudinal Research Plan
Katherine Freund
This presentation details the planned analysis of 1.5M rides of primary data, spanning 27 years, yielding significant insight into how mobility-challenged people travel in ITNAmerica’s person-centered system. While providing significant insight into populations as a whole, it is the focus on individuals over time that will offer qualitative insight into person-centered transportation behavior. Many riders stay with this transportation service for the rest of their lives. Operational software is programmed to automatically collect 178 fields of data, including such rider information as trip purpose (including medical specialty), trip frequency, age, gender, ethnicity, living arrangements, marital status, driving status, vehicle ownership and license status. Every rider signs an informed consent when they enter ITNAmerica’s service; an additional informed consent is acquired for participation in the longitudinal study.