A decade ago, safety researchers expressed concern that traffic accidents would rise as the nation’s aging population increased the number of older drivers on the road. Now, they say they've been proved wrong. Today’s drivers aged 70 and older are less likely to be involved in crashes than previous generations and are less likely to be killed or seriously injured if they do crash, according to a study recently released by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. That’s because vehicles are getting safer and seniors are generally getting healthier.
The marked shift began in the mid-1990s and indicates that growing ranks of aging drivers as baby boomers head into their retirement years aren’t making U.S. roads deadlier. Traffic fatalities overall in the U.S. have declined to levels not seen since the late 1940s, and accident rates have come down for other drivers as well.
(Source: Boston.com (Boston Globe newspaper), March, 2014, as reported in the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety eNewsletter, March 14, 2014.)
