• Can J Public Health · Jul 2004

    Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial

    Evaluation of a re-training program for older drivers.

    • Michel Bédard, Ivy Isherwood, Elizabeth Moore, Carrie Gibbons, and Wendy Lindstrom.
    • Department of Psychology, Lakehead University, 955 Oliver Road, Thunder Bay, ON P7B 5E1. michel.bedard@lakeheadu.ca
    • Can J Public Health. 2004 Jul 1; 95 (4): 295-8.

    BackgroundSome older drivers may have a higher crash risk than others. Because many of these drivers have not received formal driving training, we evaluated the effectiveness of a re-training program for older drivers as it is currently being offered. Specifically, we examined if older drivers who received the training would have better scores on a driving evaluation than drivers who did not receive the training.MethodsWe used a randomized controlled trial. Participants first took part in on-road driving evaluations (possible scores ranged from 0 to 100), after which they were block randomized into training (treatment) or waiting (control) groups based on the driving evaluation results, age, and sex. Individuals in the treatment group attended driver re-training sessions, and were tested once more with the on-road test. Those in the control group completed their second driving evaluation and were then offered the re-training sessions. The second evaluations took place approximately two months after the first evaluations.ResultsSixty-five participants completed two driving evaluations. Despite the overall improvement in driving scores (3.73, SD = 6.87, p = 0.001), we found no statistically significant difference between the control and treatment groups. The mean improvement for the control group was 3.46 (SD=6.72) compared to 4.02 (SD=7.11) for the treatment group (p = 0.747). Drivers' age was related to overall driving scores (r = -0.55, p = 0.001) but not changes between the first and second evaluations (r = 0.01, p = 0.955).InterpretationAlthough we have not demonstrated a statistically significant impact of the intervention, the overall increase suggests that an initial driving evaluation may underestimate the actual driving ability of many older drivers. Furthermore, although older drivers may have lower driving scores initially, they have the ability to improve on these scores. These findings should encourage us to explore diverse approaches to improve driving safety.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…