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Welcome Tracy Young to DrivingUniversity.com |
Session 9 - Progress |
Page 3 of 8 Course Map Logout |
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COMMON PROBLEMS IN AGING, cont.
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The other area of diminishing capacity that older drivers face is cognitive reasoning.
This can run a spectrum from slower processing of information, to Alzheimer’s Disease. The slowing down of
information processing is a normal aspect of aging. This means that an older person may take longer to perceive
hazards, and to react to them. For example, if an older driver were traveling on a congested freeway, he might
have trouble anticipating the braking of the car in front of him,
or guessing that an impatient driver may be changing lanes without warning. Advanced cognitive impairment, in the form of dementia or Alzheimer’s, is becoming more common as the average life span increases. This means that more drivers will be experiencing more dangerous situations. Researchers have studied and compared the driving performance of older drivers with and without cognitive impairment. They found that cognitively impaired drivers make more mistakes behind the wheel, mistakes that are attributable to declining mental ability rather than to bad habits. Some of these mistakes are:
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