The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety just started to recommend a new driver safety program called DriveSharp (see AAA and Posit Release Program to Improve Drivers’ Minds), developed by Posit Science. DriveSharp is a computerized cognitive assessment and training tool based on Karlene Ball’s research on older adults’ cognitive fitness and driving. 

In the press release for the agreement, Peter Kissinger, driver safety research and policy veteran and CEO of the AAA Foundation, says that “Part of making our nation’s roads safer is helping mature drivers who wish to stay active – a quickly growing population – maintain or improve their driving safety.”

We have Peter Kissinger with us to discuss the context for this innovative initiative.

Peter, I appreciate your time. In order to set the context, would you introduce the role and priorities of the AAA Foundation?

Sure. All your readers will know that AAA is the main driver association in North America, with over 50 million members. The AAA Foundation is focused on the research and policy required to improve driver safety and has 4 strategic priorities:
- Introduce a culture of traffic safety. It is an outrage that there is a driving-related death every 13 minutes in the US, and yet, we seem to accept this as status quo
- Improve road safety, especially on rural roads, where almost 60% of the deaths occur,
- Improve safety among teens, one of the highest risk groups
- Improve safety among seniors, another high-risk group.

In terms of driver-centered interventions, are your priorities are teenage and older drivers?

Yes. You have probably seen the U-shaped risk curve (Editor note: see figure at left) that shows how accident risks are very high among teenagers, then decrease and remain stable until our 60s, and then increase again.

We have promoted initiatives such as DriverZED (see www.driverzed.org) to help teenagers better identify and manage the typical sources of risk, so they advance faster through the learning curve. For older drivers we focus on how to balance the privilege of driving with the right of mobility – we know that losing driving independence can bring a variety of negative consequences for the individual.

Given aging population trends, it is clear we need to introduce better systems to balance those two goals you just outlined -safety and mobility. Do you think as a society we are prepared?

I don’t think we are, and I am pessimistic that we will be in the short term. This is a very important problem: official estimates say that the proportion of all drivers who are over 65 years of age will grow from 15% today to 25% in 2025.

Let me give you some background: two years ago we put together a workshop to identify the state of the research and the state of the practice of driver safety among Read the rest of this entry »

Several recent articles and news:

Brain Gain: the underground world of “neuroenhancing” drugs‎ (The New Yorker)

- “Alex remains enthusiastic about Adderall, but he also has a slightly jaundiced critique of it. “It only works as a cognitive enhancer insofar as you are dedicated to accomplishing the task at hand,” he said. “The number of times I’ve taken Adderall late at night and decided that, rather than starting my paper, hey, I’ll organize my entire music library! I’ve seen people obsessively cleaning their rooms on it.” Alex thought that generally the drug helped him to bear down on his work, but it also tended to produce writing with a characteristic flaw. “Often, I’ve looked back at papers I’ve written on Adderall, and they’re verbose. They’re belaboring a point, trying to create this airtight argument, when if you just got to your point in a more direct manner it would be stronger. But with Adderall I’d produce two pages on something that could be said in a couple of sentences.” Nevertheless, his Adderall-assisted papers usually earned him at least a B. They got the job done. As Alex put it, “Productivity is a good thing.”

Eschew Enhancement: Memory-boosting drugs should not be made available to the general public (Technology Review)

- “Who might use them? Students will be tempted, as might players of any game involving counting or remembering (chess, bridge, and even poker and blackjack). Certain professionals might desire a boost in attention or memory”

- “But these potentially powerful medicines should not be made available to everyone, for two reasons. The first is safety. The last several years have provided many examples of side effects, some life-threatening…The second reason is that we still know relatively little about learning and memory and how they are integrated to make judgments and decisions.”

Kellogg Settles with FTC over Health Claims on Cereal (Promo Magazine)

- “The FTC said that Kellogg promoted the cereal as “clinically shown to improve kids’ attentiveness by nearly 20%,” when in fact the study referred to in the ads showed different results.”

- “The study found that only about half the children who ate Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast showed any improvement in attentiveness, and only about one in nine improved by 20% or more, the FTC said.”

Brain shock: The new Gulf War syndrome (New Scientist)

- “The US army also screens for symptoms of mTBI when soldiers return from a tour of duty, and again three months later. The army is also carrying out neurocognitive tests on recruits before they are sent into combat so that doctors can check for deterioration in later tests.”

- “When it comes to combat trauma, unpicking the physical from the psychological is bound to be highly complex. As Barth says, perhaps the greatest danger could be in trying to simplify the picture too much. “I recommend that we get comfortable with the complexity,” he says, “and treat it as a challenge.”

Good article in the New York Times today:
An Epidemic of Crashes Among the Aging? Unlikely, Study Says

- “The (Insurance Institute for Highway Driving) insurance institute is conducting further research to determine why the risks appear to be going down for older drivers. It may be that today’s older drivers are simply in better physical and mental shape than their counterparts a decade ago, so they are not only less likely to make a driving mistake, but also less frail and better able to survive injuries.”

There is no doubt that, as a group, older persons of any given age are in better physical and mental shape today than their counterparts years ago. For context, worldwide life expectancy has increased more than 20 years in less than 6o years – so you can imagine how a person in his or her early 70s today is in better shape than someone in his or her mid-60s a few decades back.

Still, as the number of people over the age of 60 starts to grow exponentially given the influx of baby boomers, society at large will probably benefit from starting to think through 1) what are the types of programs, whether introduced and managed by the AARP, DMV or car insurance companies, that can help older adults drive safely for as long as they want and need, 2) what are the mechanisms to prevent having drivers in our roads who don’t possess the minimum perceptual and cognitive abilities required to drive “safely” (and what “safely” really means).

And, yes, we should probably have a similar conversation regarding teenage driving.
For related reading, you may enjoy these 2 articles:

- Allstate: Can we improve Driver Safety using Posit Science InSight?

- Improving Driving Skills and Brain Functioning- Interview with ACTIVE’s Jerri Edwards

Insurance company Allstate and brain fitness software developer Posit Science just announced (see press release Protecting Pennsylvania Drivers, One Brain at a Time) a very intelligent initiative:

Video exercises aid driving skills (Chicago Tribune)

-”Allstate, which called the Posit program “potentially the next big breakthrough in automobile safety,” said it expects its software exercises to reduce risky driving maneuvers by up to 40 percent and improve stopping distance by an average of 22 feet when traveling at 55 miles per hour.”

-”We’ll look to see whether over the next six to nine months there will be a reduction in” the number of accidents between the group participating in the video exercises and those sitting out, said Tom Warden, assistant vice president of Allstate’s research and planning center.

I am fortunate to interview Tom Warden, Assistant Vice President and Leader of Allstate’s Research and Planning Center, based in Menlo Park, California.

Alvaro Fernandez: Tom, thank you for your time. Can you please explain the context behind this new initiative that you just announced?

Tom Warden: Our research center is constantly looking for new ideas to improve the driving behavior of drivers of all ages. Recently we have paid extra emphasis on ways to improve the safety of older drivers.

Let me provide some background here. Allstate, as a company, has always been one of the pioneers in helping to introduce new safety measures. For example, we were among the pioneers in the 60s to advocate for mandatory use of seating belts, given research studies on the benefits for drivers and passengers alike. More recently, we helped lobby for wider adoption of airbags, an effective but expensive way of protection that only became mainstream when manufacturers were required to include them.

Let’s talk now about your agreement with Posit Science. What will happen over the next months?

The first thing we are doing is to conduct a research study to analyze the real-life impact of Posit Science InSight, a computer-based cognitive training program, on accident rates. We know that as drivers get older Read the rest of this entry »