The relation between performance in on-road driving, cognitive screening and driving simulator in older healthy drivers

As people age, physical and psychological functions deteriorate which is associated with higher crash risk. In different countries traffic authorities developed screening systems to identify unsafe older drivers. However, until today these screening systems (medical check, road test, cognitive screening) failed. In this context, driving simulators could be helpful in measuring driving performance under controllable and replicable experimental conditions in near-crash situations. However, little is known about the relation between older drivers' performance in an on-road test, cognitive screening and driving simulator performance. In this paper we examined the relation between these three driving related measures in a sample of older participants (mean age = 72.12 yrs.). The results show that performance in an on-road test and the performance in the cognitive tests explained 50% of the variance in the driving simulator performance (r = .71). The current analysis indicates that driving simulator data represents on-road driving behaviour and cognitive performance of older drivers. This research presents a substantial potential for driving simulators, for example identifying or retraining unsafe older drivers.