Assessing Fitness-To-Drive among Older Drivers: A Comparative Analysis of Potential Alternatives to on-Road Driving Test

Yongjun Shen, Onaira Zahoor, Xu Tan, Muhammad Usama and Tom Brijs
Additional contact information
Yongjun Shen: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Onaira Zahoor: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Xu Tan: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Muhammad Usama: School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Tom Brijs: Transportation Research Institute (IMOB), Hasselt University, 3500 Hasselt, Belgium

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 23, 1-18

Abstract: To enable older drivers to maintain mobility without endangering public safety, it is necessary to develop more effective means of assessing their fitness-to-drive as alternatives to an on-road driving test. In this study, a functional ability test, simulated driving test, and on-road driving test were carried out for 136 older drivers. Influencing factors related to fitness-to-drive were selected based on the correlation between the outcome measure of each test and the pass/fail outcome of the on-road driving test. Four potential alternatives combining different tests were considered and three modeling techniques were compared when constructing the fitness-to-drive assessment model for the elderly. As a result, 92 participants completed all of the tests, of which 61 passed the on-road driving test and the remaining 31 failed. A total of seven influencing factors from all types of tests were selected. The best model was trained by the technique of gradient boosted machine using all of the seven factors, generating the highest accuracy of 92.8%, with sensitivity of 0.94 and specificity of 0.90. The proposed fitness-to-drive assessment method is considered an effective alternative to the on-road driving test, and the results offer a valuable reference for those unfit-to-drive older drivers to either adjust their driving behavior or cease driving.

Keywords: road traffic safety; older drivers; fitness-to-drive; simulated driving; gradient boosted machine (GBM) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/23/8886/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/23/8886/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:23:p:8886-:d:453453

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().