Validity and Usability of a Safe Driving Behaviors Measure for Older Adults: Strategy for Congestion Mitigation.

摘要

Statistics project that crash/injury/fatality rates of older drivers will increase with the future growth of this population. Accurate and precise measurement of older driver behaviors becomes imperative to curtail these crash trends and resulting congestion. The Comprehensive Driving Evaluation (gold standard test) is highly valid and reliable, but limitations include being time-consuming, providing limited access, and holding an element of threat (mandatory/ ethical reporting upon failing). Self-report is a means to identify older adults safe driving behaviors, increase driving safety awareness/ knowledge, and promote behavior change and safer driving outcomes. Existing measures are limited in accurately assessing older driver behaviors due to length, respondent burden, and inadequately representing driving constructs (i.e. person, vehicle, environment). Current self-report measures fall short of providing meaningful descriptions of driving ability level, and do not contribute to targeting risk reduction or increasing driving safety strategies. In contrast, item response theory or IRT methods are particularly useful to offer precise measurement of driving behaviors. Understanding a drivers level of safe driving behaviors is a critical step towards providing an entry point for logical and effective interventions, identifying optimal training parameters, and predicting future driving ability. To that end we propose the further development of such a measure.