Associations between personality and self-reported driving restriction in the Candrive II study of older drivers

- The relationship between personality and self-restriction of driving among older adults was examined.
- Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness-to-Experience were associated with self-restriction among older adults.
- After controlling for known driving predictors, Extraversion remained positively associated with situational driving frequency.

We investigated whether traits from the five-factor model of personality traits (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness-to-Experience) were associated with driving self-regulation - specifically, situational driving frequency (SDF) and situational driving avoidance (SDA). Using data from 324 participants (185 men, 139 women, aged 72-92 years), collected as part of the Canadian Driving Research Initiative for Vehicular Safety in the Elderly study, we examined associations between each personality trait and driving self-regulation (SDF and SDA). Crude associations between personality factors and self-restriction highlighted the relevance of Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness-to-Experience. However, after controlling for common predictors of driving behaviour (including demographic variables, driving-related psychosocial measures, cognitive measures, and a measure of depression), only Extraversion was positively associated with SDF (p = 0.012), accounting for a small amount of additional variance (i.e., 1.3%). Future research is required to further elucidate the relationship between personality and objective measures of self-regulation among older drivers.