Research projects

Unsafe behaviors during actual automobile driving of elderly drivers including mild cognitive impairment and higher brain dysfunction were examined using objective evaluation by the driving instructor, drive recorder evaluation by the occupational therapist, and subjective evaluation pre- and post-actual driving by the participants themselves. Significant correlations were observed between the driving instructor's evaluation for actual driving and occupational therapist's evaluation for drive recorder images. The results also demonstrated that those whose driving instructor's evaluation scores were low tended to show high self-evaluation prior to the actual driving test, Pre-test high self-evaluation decreased in the post-test evaluation. The present study suggest that self-evaluation for driving behavior is significantly contributing to the safe and appropriate driving behaviors in the elderly drivers.