A recent randomised controlled trial published in theJournal of the American Geriatrics Societyfound that an online decision aid may help older adults decide whether and when to stop driving.
Compared with older adults who viewed an educational website, those who viewed the decision aid, called Healthwise® DDA, had lower decisional conflict and higher knowledge about whether to stop or continue driving. The online aid has six sections: “Get the Facts,” “Compare Options,” “Your Feelings,” “Your Decision,” “Quiz Yourself,” and “Your Summary.”
In the National Institute on Aging–funded trial of 301 participants aged 70 years and older, 51.2% of whom identified as female,. the tool had high acceptability, with nearly all of those who used it saying that they would recommend it to others.
“The decision about when to stop driving is a difficult and emotional one – and also one most older adults eventually face,” explained lead author Marian Betz, MD, MPH, of the University of Colorado and the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center. “Tools like this one may help older adults make the decision and, hopefully, reduce negative feelings about the process.”
Displaying the highway death toll on message boards (eg, “1669 deaths this year on Texas roads”) is a common awareness campaign, but new research published in Science shows that it actually leads to more crashes.
Their study focuses on Texas, where officials chose to display these messages only one week each month. The researchers compared crash data from before the campaign to after it started as well as examined the weekly differences within each month during the campaign. They found:
There were more crashes during the week with fatality messaging compared to weeks without.
Displaying a fatality message caused a 4.5% in crashes in the 10km after the message boards. This increase is comparable to raising the speed limit 5–8kph or reducing highway police by 6–14%, according to previous research.
The researchers suggest this “in-your-face” messaging approach weighs down drivers’ “cognitive loads,” temporarily impacting their ability to respond to changes in traffic conditions.
“Driving on a busy highway [and] having to navigate lane changes is more cognitively demanding than driving down a straight stretch of empty highway,” said Assistant Professor Joshua Madsen. “People have limited attention. When a driver’s cognitive load is already maxed out, adding on an attention-grabbing, sobering reminder of highway deaths [can] become a dangerous distraction.”
Another finding was that the higher the number in the fatality message, the more harmful the effects. The number of additional crashes each month increased as the death toll accumulated throughout the year, with the most additional crashes occurring in January when the message stated the year’s total. Crashes were also found to increase in areas where drivers experienced higher cognitive loads, such as heavy traffic or driving past multiple message boards.
“The messages also increased the number of multi-vehicle crashes, but not single-vehicle crashes,” said Hall. “This is in line with drivers with increased cognitive loads making smaller errors due to distraction, like drifting out of a lane, rather than driving off the road.”
However, crashes were reduced when the displayed death tolls were low and when the message appeared where the highways were less complex. Madsen said this suggests that at times the messaging was not as taxing on drivers’ attention. However, alternative campaigns should be considered.
“Distracted driving is dangerous driving,” said Madsen. “Perhaps these campaigns can be reimagined to reach drivers in a safer way, such as when they are stopped at an intersection, so that their attention while driving remains focused on the roads.”
Suicide and motor vehicle traffic accidents are two of the most common forms of death among adolescents. A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that adolescents who reported at least one suicide attempt within the last year, compared to those reporting no attempts, were also more likely to report infrequent seat belt use and driving with a drunk driver. There were also over twice as likely to report driving drunk.
The researchers analysed data from over 13 500 U.S. high school students who participated in the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and found that 19% of the sample reported suicidal ideation. Texting or e-mailing while driving was the most commonly reported form of risky driving behaviours.
Study lead author Kyle T. Ganson, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Toronto, said: “The findings from this study emphasise the need for mental health support for adolescents experiencing suicidality as a means of increasing safety for themselves and their communities, as accidental injury deaths via car accidents were the leading cause of death among adolescents in 2019.”
“The more severe the suicidality, the stronger the association with risky driving behaviours,” Dr Ganson continued. “Adolescents who reported a suicide injury, such as a poisoning or overdose needing to be treated by a medical professional, had the highest likelihood to report all four risky driving behaviors we examined.”
The researchers stress the importance of the implications their findings have to protect the health and well-being of adolescents. “Health care professionals should consider discussing risky driving behaviours with teens who report suicidality,” said co-author Jason M. Nagata, MD, MSc, assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
