School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, 550 rue Cumberland, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Accid Anal Prev. 2010 May;42(3):809-17. doi: 10.1016/j.aap.2009.07.010.
Older drivers' ability to trigger simultaneous responses in reaction to simulated challenging road events was examined through crash risk and local analyses of acceleration and direction data provided by the simulator. This was achieved by segregating and averaging the simulator's primary measures according to six short time intervals, one before and five during the challenging events. Twenty healthy adults aged 25-45 years old (M=29.5+/-4.32) and 20 healthy adults aged 65 and older (M=73.4+/-5.17) were exposed to five simulated scenarios involving sudden, complex and unexpected maneuvres. Participants were also administered the Useful Field of View (UFOV), single reaction time and choice reaction time tests, a visual secondary task in the simulator, and a subjective workload evaluation (NASA-TLX). Results indicated that the challenging event that required multiple synchronized reactions led to a higher crash rate in older drivers. Acceleration and orientation data analyses confirmed that the drivers who crashed limited their reaction. The other challenging events did not generate crashes because they could be anticipated and one response (braking) was sufficient to avoid crash. Our findings support the proposal (Hakamies-Blomqvist, L., Mynttinen, S., Backman, M., Mikkonen, V., 1999. Age-related differences in driving: are older drivers more serial? International Journal of Behavioral Development 23, 575-589) that older drivers have more difficulty activating car controls simultaneously putting them at risk when facing challenging and time pressure road events.
通过对模拟器提供的碰撞风险和加速度及方向数据的局部分析，研究了老年驾驶员在模拟复杂道路挑战事件时同时做出反应的能力。这是通过根据六个短时间间隔对模拟器的主要测量值进行隔离和平均来实现的，这六个时间间隔包括挑战事件之前的一个时间间隔和挑战事件期间的五个时间间隔。20 名年龄在 25-45 岁的健康成年人（M=29.5+/-4.32）和 20 名 65 岁及以上的健康成年人（M=73.4+/-5.17）参与了五个模拟场景，涉及突然、复杂和意外的操作。参与者还接受了有用视野（UFOV）、单一反应时间和选择反应时间测试、模拟器中的视觉辅助任务以及主观工作负荷评估（NASA-TLX）。结果表明，需要多个同步反应的挑战事件导致老年驾驶员的碰撞率更高。加速度和方向数据分析证实，发生碰撞的驾驶员限制了他们的反应。其他具有挑战性的事件没有导致碰撞，因为它们可以预测，并且一个反应（制动）足以避免碰撞。我们的研究结果支持这样的假设（Hakamies-Blomqvist, L., Mynttinen, S., Backman, M., Mikkonen, V., 1999. Age-related differences in driving: are older drivers more serial? International Journal of Behavioral Development 23, 575-589），即老年驾驶员在同时激活汽车控制方面更困难，使他们在面临具有挑战性和时间压力的道路事件时面临风险。
