Maintaining Safe Mobility In An Aging Society

By 2030, 20 percent of the world’s drivers, 60 million in all, will be over the age of 65. Consequently, safe and efficient mobility for older adults is a complex and pressing issue. Maintaining Safe Mobility in an Aging Society addresses the complexities surrounding the booming number of aging drivers and practical solutions for sustaining safe transportation for this growing group. This plainspoken resource informs safe mobility discussions on a variety of areas, including: Necessary skills for safe driving and how age affects them Current evidence on how medical conditions and medication hinder driving skills Comprehensive screening description and assessment practices, issues, and tools Sensitive ways to help older drivers transition into driving cessation Impact of advanced vehicle technology on aging drivers Approaches to strengthening safety-conscious licensing policies Draws the Significant Link Between Mobility and Well Being In addition to discussing how age impacts both the risk and severity of accidents and the link between mobility and well-being, this authoritative work discusses means to achieve safer mobility, including roadway design and community transportation options. Authored by driver safety and awareness experts, it covers psychological and physical changes associated with age (both normal and pathological), including an important but rarely explored aspect of dementia known as wandering behavior. It also addresses the role of emerging technology. Maintaining Safe Mobility in an Aging Society is a concise reference that encompasses an impressive breadth of ready-to-access information. Thorough and systematically organized, it is a groundbreaking and indispensable resource for those providing services to seniors as well as those responsible for transportation policy and design.

Promoting Safe Transportation among Older Adults: Perspectives and Strategies provides a concise, comprehensive, and up-to-date resource on safe mobility for an aging population. The book offers an interdisciplinary perspective for understanding and influencing the behavior of older adults with regard to their safe transportation. It is organized around the professions and disciplines that have a stake in the safe transportation of older adults and the role they play at each stage of their mobility needs. The book also addresses the various strategies that have been used to help keep older adults safe and mobile. Readers will find great insights on key issues related to aging and mobility, giving them an overarching framework for how to maintain safe mobility into older adulthood. The book enables readers to understand the perspectives of the critical groups of people involved in keeping older people safe and explores existing strategies by which an aging individual can maintain safe mobility. Utilizes a multidisciplinary, evidence-based approach for examining the complexities of transportation for older adults Offers an integrated, overarching narrative for understanding the key issues of safety and mobility in our aging society Written by leading transportation and health scholars Offers insights into the perspectives of all the stakeholders, such as hands-on transportation and health practitioners, students of varying levels, researchers and policymakers

Examining the mobility and safety needs of older persons, this volume reviews the design and operation of the surface transportation system and recommends improvements that better serve an aging population. It contains papers on: Significance of Mobility for the Well-Being of the Elderly; The Mobility Needs of the Elderly; and more.

Mobility, or the ability to get from place to place, is important for everyone. Mobility enables people to conduct activities of daily life, stay socially connected with their world, participate in activities that make life enjoyable, and increase their quality of life. In the United States, and indeed in Michigan, personal mobility is frequently equated with being able to drive a personal automobile. However, because of age related medical conditions and the medications used to treat them, as people age into older adulthood they are more likely to experience declines in abilities needed for safe driving. Because of the preference for the personal automobile, and the lack of acceptable mobility alternatives, one focus of efforts to enhance safe mobility for older adults is to keep older adults driving for as long as they can safely do so. At the same time, society has a responsibility to help maintain mobility for those who are unable or choose not to drive. As the population of older adults in Michigan continues to grow, it is becoming more and more critical that the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) understand the mobility needs of older adults and incorporate these needs into transportation facility design and planning. This project provided the background information needed to help MDOT identify where to concentrate resources to maximize the safe mobility of Michigan's aging population. The overall goal of the project was to help maintain the safety and well-being of Michigan's older adult residents by developing a set of low-cost, high-impact measures that could be implemented by MDOT. This goal was achieved through a literature review, an analysis of demographic data, and statewide surveys of older adults and family members/caregivers for Michigan older adults in order to gain a better understanding of the travel and residency patterns, gaps in transportation services, and the transportation needs and wants of Michigan older adult residents and the population of adults who provide care and/or transportation assistance to Michigan older adults. The complete results of these research activities, a list of measures for improving older adult mobility in Michigan, and an implementation plan are included in this report.