The UK’s population is getting older. This ageing population poses a unique set of road safety challenges. However, for driving instructors, it’s a potential new business opportunity.

The challenge is how to minimise a driver’s risk whilst allowing them to maintain their mobility. The opportunity for instructors is to become part of the solution.  However, this is a highly specialised area that requires an ADI to have a specific range of knowledge.  Now you might now say – well of course I have the knowledge as I am an ADI!  But think about it for a moment, how much do you really know about older road users?  When you qualified did you get any training in this area?  Read on, you may find a couple of surprises in store.

Not just a number

The first thing to say is that age is not really the issue. Rather, it is the health conditions that come with age and can impact on areas of the driving task. To drive safely you must be able to see, operate the controls, be aware of what is happening around you and be in control of your emotions.  In this article, I’ll just be exploring some elements relating to eyesight. These can be more complex than you may think.

See the signs

Eyesight is not simply about being able to read a registration plate at the required distance.  As we age, our sight may decline in other ways. Most notably, we will lose our ability to deal with changing light conditions and our useful field of vision will decline.

We will all know someone who has given up driving at night. Approaching 50 or over, many people start to feel night driving is not as easy as it once was, but have you ever stopped to think why?  One of the main reasons is what is termed glare recovery. Our eye’s ability to adjust to changes in light slows as we age, meaning that as we go from a well-lit area into a darker area it takes more time for our eyes to adjust. This does not just occur at night it also occurs in many other situations, for example, when driving in sun under a tree canopy where the sunlight is strobing through the trees, or at a junction where you are looking right into the sun and then left away from it.  In these situations, it becomes very easy for the driver to miss a hazard.

Wide eyed

The other issue I mentioned is a reduction in a driver’s useful field of vision. We lose between 1 to 3 degrees of peripheral vision per decade of life meaning our field of vision becomes narrow.   This is combined, with the loss of flexibility we suffer in our back and neck, making it more difficult to see in many situations, for example, when emerging from junctions or pulling away from the side of the road.

I hope, with this very brief overview of how the ageing process may impact a driver’s vision, makes older drivers a fascinating but specialised area of driver education. As you may be aware several road safety teams in the UK deliver older driving support schemes, but many teams are struggling to recruit instructors able to deliver their schemes as they have no understanding of the issues faced by the target group. To address this, Road Safety GB (this is a membership organisation whose members include local government road safety officers), funded by the Department of Transport has developed, delivered (to 250 instructors) and evaluated a course for driving instructors.

Developing your professional skills

This course has now been accredited as a Recognised Award by the DVSA and is a great course for any ADI or PDI to attend, even if you don’t envisage working with older drivers, as it will help you to increase your learner drivers’ awareness of the difficulties older drivers, and pedestrians face.

The course is delivered online and consists of two 2-hour seminars and two short e-learning modules covering diabetes and how to help people more accurately assess their own driving ability. Road Safety GB is aiming to deliver two courses a year, each limited to only 20 places. The places are sure to go very quickly given the cost is only £79.00.

On completion of the course, if you wish, your name will be entered on a list of ADIs who have completed the course, the course will be available to Road Safety GBs members when they are looking to recruit instructors for their older driver schemes.

The next course will be delivered on the 14th and 21st Nov and starts at 6pm on both evenings. To enrol on the course please, click here.

 

Ian Edwards

Ian Edwards is an independent road safety consultant who has developed and delivers several of Road Safety GB’s courses, including the Foundation and Behavioural Change course.