Safe Driving for Seniors: Evaluating Your Skills Behind the Wheel

Photo source: Kampus Production

With ageing, shifts in physical health, cognitive function, and sensory abilities may influence driving skills. While these changes don’t automatically make senior drivers less capable, they do call for awareness, adaptations, and occasionally difficult choices about whether to keep driving.

Regularly assessing your driving skills is necessary to maintain safety for yourself and others on the road. Here are several ways to do it. 

Ways to Evaluate a Senior’s Driving Skills

Professional driving assessments

Professional driving assessments involve evaluations conducted by certified driving rehabilitation specialists or occupational therapists who specialise in senior drivers. They perform comprehensive, unbiased assessments that identify strengths and weaknesses in driving skills and help provide personalised recommendations for safe driving or alternatives. 

Self-assessment

Regularly reflect on your own driving habits and experiences to notice any problems such as difficulty with lane changes, slower reaction times, trouble with night driving, or increased anxiety. 

Visual and hearing evaluation

Eye health tests focus on visual acuity, peripheral vision, depth perception, and contrast sensitivity, while hearing tests ensure the driver can hear warning signals like horns or sirens. Corrective measures such as glasses, contact lenses, or hearing aids can improve driving safety, but deficits detected here may signal a need for closer monitoring or driving modifications. 

Physical and motor skills assessments

Driving requires adequate range of motion, muscle strength, and coordination. Medical or occupational therapy evaluations can assess flexibility of the neck, arms, and legs, hand grip strength, joint pain (e.g., arthritis), and overall mobility needed to operate vehicle controls safely. 

As a driving senior, adopting the methods above allows you to confidently navigate the roads while prioritising your safety and that of others. Incorporating both self-assessments and professional evaluations can help you identify areas where you may need to adapt your driving habits or seek additional support.