Assisting the older driver - SWOV

Assisting the older driver
90% of the functionally young and 68% of the functionally middle‐aged
drivers received the maximum number of warnings, only 30% of the
functionally old drivers did.
Workload
To study the effects of messages regarding priority regulation on workload,
mean reaction times and fractions missed per intersection were averaged
over intersections that had the same priority regulation. Note that
participants did not necessarily receive a message before arriving at each of
those intersections, either because of their low approach speed or because
they had already received the message regarding RoW or YtR at another
intersection since they had turned left or right.
Mixed between‐within analyses of variance showed that workload at
intersections differed between age groups for all types of priority regulation
(see Table 8.8). Post hoc Bonferroni tests showed that functionally young
participants had lower reaction times than functionally old participants at all
three types of intersections (p = 0.004 for RoW; p = 0.016 for YtR; p = 0.040 for
AMR). At intersections where participants were driving on a major road
(RoW), reaction times of functionally middle‐aged drivers were also lower
than those of functionally old participants (p = 0.004). Age effects for fractions
missed were only found for RoW and YtR. At the former, functionally young
and middle‐aged participants had lower fractions missed than functionally
old participants (p = 0.007 and p = 0.022 respectively). At the latter,
functionally younger participants had lower fractions missed than
functionally old participants (p = 0.033).
Within‐subjects analyses of variance showed that only messages regarding
the participant’s approach of a major road (AMR) affected workload. The
effect was contrary to what was expected; driver support caused increased
reaction times and higher fractions missed. Interaction effects of functional
age and driver support were not significant.
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