Ford Helps Seniors Assess Driving Skills; Offers Safety Features with Older Drivers in Mind
For many baby boomers, maintaining their driving skills during their “golden years” is the key to enjoying leisurely road trips to visit grandchildren, old friends and National Parks. Ford Motor Company wants to help them arrive safely at their dream destinations by expanding its sponsorship of a pilot program with the non-profit Traffic Improvement Association (TIA), which helps older drivers evaluate their ability to safely operate motor vehicles.
The effort complements Ford’s aggressive introduction of vehicle features and technologies that address the safety needs of older drivers and those with physical limitations.
Risks Rise with Age
Ford is helping expand the program at a time when the U.S. elderly population is growing faster than any other age demographic. The aging Baby Boomer generation is expected to increase the number of U.S. licensed drivers 65 and older by 25 percent in the next decade, as its oldest members turn 65 in 2011. By 2020, their number will reach 40 million. Other than teen-age drivers, drivers age 65 and older have the highest accident and traffic fatality rates among all age groups, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Testing Reflexes, Reinforcing Fundamentals
TIA presented a record 38 Ford-sponsored workshops at hospitals and senior centers around Michigan in 2008. Even more workshops will be offered in 2009. The three-day workshops are confidential, voluntary and designed to allow seniors to self-evaluate their skills.
TIA workshops educate older motorists about the effects of aging on reflexes and cognitive skills. They also teach compensation skills for diminished abilities, and reinforce fundamental defensive driving techniques. The program includes an on-the-road evaluation conducted by AAA-certified instructors in the drivers’ own vehicles.
Meeting the Needs of Drivers of All Ages
One in five drivers – 54 million people in the U.S. – cope with temporary or permanent physical challenges such as injury or obesity that can inhibit their abilities to turn their heads to check blind spots or avoid a rear-end collision. Older drivers, in particular, are susceptible to mobility challenges.
Such findings have helped to drive Ford’s development of radar- and camera-based active safety and driver-aid technologies, such as backing and parking aids, forward collision warning systems and Adaptive Cruise Control.
Ford will launch new Blind Spot Mirrors, Collision Warning with Brake Support, Forward Collision Warning technology and BLIS® (Blind Spot Information System) with Cross Traffic Alert – a radar system that helps detect vehicles in blind spots during normal driving and oncoming traffic when reversing out of parking spots – in 2009.
The new technologies build on Ford’s leading number of top safety ratings, including the most 5-star government ratings of any automaker, and a leading number of Insurance Institute for Highway Safety “Top Safety Picks.”
