EFPA  European Federation of Psychologists Association

1. Age-based Population screening for Fitness to Drive

AENEAS Final conference Green Mobility for Active Aging APRIL 2011

Age-Based population screening for fitness to drive does not produce any safety benefits

EFPA Position statement on Age-Based Population Screening for Fitness to drive

This document is a brief summary of selected parts of the two Danish reports: “Aldring, demens og bilkørsel” (Siren & Meng, 2010) and “Helbredsmæssig kontrol ved ældre bilisters kørekortsfornyelse –

Evaluering af de sikkerhedsmæssige effekter af demenstesten” (Siren & Meng, 2010), from DTU Transport, Denmark.

(An article on the results of the empirical part of the latter report is forth coming entitled ”cognitive screening of older drivers does not produce safety benefits”).

By Annette Meng and Ralf Risser

Standing Committee of Traffic Psychology, EFPA & Anu Siren, DTU Transport, June 2010

The rationale behind age based population screening for fitness to drive is to increase the road safety for both the older drivers themselves and for other road users.

It intuitively makes sense to “remove risky drivers” from the driver population and thereby increase the road safety for all. Consequently, age-based screening of older drivers is used as a safety measure in most European countries.

However, there are two problems with this.

1)    First, older drivers generally do not have increased accident risk that calls for the society to invest in a costly age-based population screening.

2)    According to research literature, aged based population screening does not succeed in producing the desired safety benefits.

Tags: Annette Meng, EFPA, Ralf Risser