[oicu812]

People over 70 years old in the Netherlands have 2.8 times the fatality rate of drivers under 60 years old. [1] So the road design is not the cure-all that this article suggests since the elderly are still causing fatalities even with the improved road design. It's disappointing that age was not cited as one of the main causes of accidents.

Yes, we can and should improve the design of the roads. However, we also need to improve the driving skills of the young and elderly.

[1] https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/older-road-users

[goda90]

A great thing about the Netherlands is that their infrastructure makes it much easier for them to take away the licenses of older drivers who no longer can pass driving tests without leaving that person stranded at home.

[slg]

I noticed that link shows the jump in fatality rate for older cyclists and pedestrians is bigger than the one for drivers. How much do your skills as a pedestrian really degrade as you get older? To me, this suggests that part of this increase in fatalities is due to the body weakening as we age. An average 30-year-old almost certainly has higher odds of surviving the same accident compared to a typical 75-year-old. Maybe looking at the fatality rate for 70+ year old automobile passengers versus passengers under 60 would be a good baseline to show this and allow us to better estimate the true danger of declining skill of a driver.

[os2warpman]

The increase in fatalities is almost exclusively due to frailty.

[tobyjsullivan]

The article you link to specifically calls out that they can't and won't speculate about whether age is a factor in causing car crashes. Elderly people have higher mortality rates in virtually all cases of injury and illness so it shouldn't be surprising this is true when they are involved in a car crash.

[fbernier]

Yes, age diminishing driving skills certainly is a huge factor but I wonder how much of this age stat is due to the different generation in which they learned to drive.

[ebiester]

I remember driving with my grandparents at that age, and there is a reflex issue. Their reflexes slow and it becomes a lot more difficult for them.

[os2warpman]

>However, we also need to improve the driving skills of the young and elderly.

In the US, at least, an 80-year-old driver is safer than a 21-year-old.

Additionally, the least safe group of female drivers, females aged 15-20, is only marginally more likely to be operating a motor vehicle that causes a fatal crash (25.5 per 100k licensed drivers for teenaged girls) than the safest male cohort (23.8 for males aged 65-74).

The gender gap is not even close. Males aged 15-20 are 60.3, my cohort is in the mid-30s, and retiree males are in the mid-20s.

Female retirees are 7.5, geriatrics 10.1. All other age groups are in the mid-teens.

It doesn't matter how you massage the data.

Driving for work vs. not, crashes per hours driven, crashes per number of licensed drivers by gender, crashes per 100 million miles driven, highway vs. surface street, at all times in every instance women cause fewer single vehicle, multi-vehicle, pedestrian-involved, injurious, and fatal, crashes.

Crashes involving a female driver are also less likely to have passenger fatalities, due to the greater likelihood that all passengers will be wearing their seatbelts. Females are less likely (by a LOT) to drive intoxicated, less likely to drive distracted, and are less likely to speed.

Actuaries working for insurance firms and rental car bean counters have known this irrefutable and unquestionable truth for at least 30 years.

Whenever I suggest that males receive additional training and oversight until their crash rates fall to those of the typical 16-year-old girl, people get irate.

edit: I can't find the numbers but it is fact that CDLs (commercial driver's licenses) both lower and level the statistics so training and oversight is almost certainly the answer.

[olyjohn]

CDLs also will lose their jobs or careers if they get infractions or accidents.

[sotix]

Interesting insight. Do you have a source I could read more about the statistics here?

[bradlys]

These numbers don’t really account for the fact that the “official” suicide is 4x the rate of women. Men do more dangerous things but they also just kill themselves in many different ways that don’t get depicted accurately in the stats.

[watwut]

These are generally not suicides and suicides are not all that relevant. There is nothing inaccurate about these statistics. Statistically speaking, women drive better.

[const_cast]

Women just partake in less risky behavior, period.

One fun example of this is gay bars versus lesbian bars. Lesbian bars are exceedingly rare. Some previous owners have talked about it, but it boils down to:

1. Women don't have the same rate of alcoholism as men. Gay bars are fueled in large part due to men's substance abuse issues combined with higher rates of substance abuse in gay men.

2. Women don't seek sex with people they barely know like men do, and particularly gay men. Well, there goes the allure of the lesbian bar.

Women die less, drink less, smoke less, do crime less, everything.

[watwut]

How does that contradicts anything? Even if it was only factor that makes women better drivers, they would still be better drivers. And it would make sense to put more effort into teaching men better.

Women making more rational decisions about alcohol, being less impulsive in emotional situations might be other factors ... but again, a solution might involve teaching men to control impulses better, more like women do.

All those are influenced by culture and societal expections. Ration of women vs men drinking/smaking changes with time and culture.

That being said, 100% of women die, just like 100% of men die.

[const_cast]

> How does that contradicts anything?

It doesn't, I never said it does. In fact I'm just adding on, not arguing.

> but again, a solution might involve teaching men to control impulses better, more like women do.

Yeah I agree that will definitely help.

> Ration of women vs men drinking/smoking changes with time and culture.

Somewhat, but I don't believe there was ever a time where women were ahead of men. I think pretty much for all of human history, on the topic of "stuff that can kill you" men take the lead. With the exception being pregnancy, but that's pretty self explanatory.

I think there has to be some hormonal component to this. It seems testosterone is not so good for addictions or impulse control. I don't have any evidence, although maybe some exists. It just seems... more than cultural if this has been a problem for as long as human history has existed.

[satisfice]

Safer is not necessarily better. That’s a choice you are making.

I gave up driving a motorcycle when I got married, because I no longer enjoyed putting myself and others at risk. It fascinated me how instantly I lost interest in it, because I hadn’t realized that risk had been the prime motivator.

Maybe the sensation of risk is an important vitamin for the spirit of a man. Anyway, you don’t know that it isn’t.

[UncleMeat]

Are you claiming that the difference in traffic fatalities among men and women is because men are secretly using traffic fatalities to commit suicide?

[glenstein]

I'm not sure the article takes the opposite side on this point, and I don't think it it was claiming to be a cure-all.

[amrocha]

Ah, so close.

Old people aren’t bad drivers because of “driving skills”. They’re bad drivers because driving is incredibly dangerous and they’re old.

What we need to do to prevent this is eliminate driving as a lifestyle. Treat it as the dangerous act that it truly is. We don’t let 75 year olds operate heavy machinery, we shouldn’t let them operate cars either.

[tim333]

>we also need to improve the driving skills of ... elderly

You link doesn't say that. It says they are more likely to die in accidents because they are old and don't survive, not because they cause them by bad driving.