Age-Related Changes in Driver Attention

An aging driver population

Drivers aged 65+ now account for a growing share of all licensed drivers in high-income countries, and that share will continue to rise over the next few decades.¹ This is often framed as a “safety problem,” but the evidence is more nuanced:

• Crash patterns change with age. Older adults have disproportionately more crashes at intersections and in turning/merging situations, and are over-represented in “failure to yield” collisions—even after accounting for mileage.¹
• Some behaviors improve with age. Older drivers are less likely to speed aggressively or drive under the influence, and they tend to use seat belts more consistently than younger drivers.¹

Chronological age itself is a crude proxy. What actually changes are visual processing, cognitive speed and attention, and sensory (especially auditory) function. Those changes make it harder to notice and interpret hazards in time, but they also point to concrete design strategies for safer roads and warning systems.

From vision to useful vision

Licensing standards still focus heavily on visual acuity (reading letters on an eye chart). Yet acuity on its own is a poor predictor of crash risk in older drivers.² The critical issue is not just seeing clearly, but how quickly and broadly a driver can process visual information while doing more than one thing at once.

This is where the Useful Field of View (UFOV) comes in. UFOV is the visual region from which one can extract information without moving the eyes or head, under time pressure and divided attention.³

Key findings from Ball, Owsley, and colleagues:

• In a landmark study of older drivers, substantial UFOV reduction was associated with roughly a two-fold increase in future crash risk, even after adjusting for age, health, and mileage.⁴
• Earlier work showed that older adults with marked UFOV “shrinkage” were several times more likely to have had a crash in the previous five years than peers with intact UFOV.⁵
• Normative data confirm that UFOV performance declines with age and is independently influenced by cognition, vision, and health, while remaining more predictive of crashes than acuity alone.⁶

A useful way to think about it:

Visual field is what lands on the retina.
Useful field of view is the slice of that field you can actually use in a split second, while also steering, reading signs, and managing traffic.

As UFOV shrinks, hazards at the edges of that attentional window—like a cyclist in the periphery or a pedestrian approaching a crosswalk—are more likely to go unnoticed until very late.

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Hazard perception and reaction time

Age-related changes are not only spatial (UFOV) but also temporal: how quickly hazards are recognized and acted on.

Controlled studies of hazard perception show that older drivers have longer response times to developing hazards in video-based tasks, largely driven by slower cognitive processing and selective attention rather than simple “slow reflexes.”⁷

Reviews and meta-analyses consistently highlight cognitive measures as key:

• Composite cognitive tests such as UFOV and the Trail Making Test (TMT) are among the strongest predictors of on-road performance and crash risk in older drivers, outperforming visual acuity alone.⁸⁹
• On-road assessments show that composite “cognitive functioning” scores predict behind-the-wheel safety better than eye charts.¹⁰
• Simulator studies suggest that older drivers often need a larger time margin to avoid unexpected hazards and may have reduced maximum steering velocities.¹¹

A seemingly small difference in perception–reaction time in the lab (for example, 0.3–0.5 seconds) translates into several extra car lengths at urban speeds—easily the gap between a near-miss and a collision.

Training the useful field of view

The story isn’t all decline. Because UFOV reflects attentional processing, it can be trained.

• In the ACTIVE trial, older adults randomized to speed-of-processing training (tasks modeled on UFOV) had significantly fewer at-fault crashes over six years than controls—about a 50% reduction in crash rate among those who completed the training.¹²
• Other work similarly suggests that UFOV-based training can improve processing speed and reduce simulated crash involvement, particularly for older drivers who start out with more impaired UFOV.¹³¹⁴

UFOV is unusual in traffic safety because it is both a risk marker (restricted UFOV predicts crashes) and a target for intervention (training can expand the useful attentional window, at least in some drivers).

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Hearing, attention channels, and auditory warnings

Vision is only one attention channel. Aging also affects hearing, especially high-frequency sensitivity and the ability to separate signals from background noise. In complex soundscapes (traffic, conversations, radio), older adults may struggle more to pick out weak or unfamiliar sounds.

Yet they retain very strong learned responses to high-salience, familiar auditory patterns—especially car horns and certain alarm tones.

Studies of in-vehicle warning systems show that:

• Auditory alerts can produce faster braking responses than visual-only alerts, particularly for older drivers and when events occur in the central field of view (where visual load is already high).¹⁵
• For older drivers with reduced night vision or contrast sensitivity, adding an auditory warning substantially reduces both reaction time and crash rate in simulated rear-end and intersection conflicts.¹⁶
• Multimodal warnings (auditory plus tactile seat or steering-wheel vibrations) often outperform unimodal cues, but excessive or poorly timed combinations can increase workload and confusion, especially in older drivers.¹⁷¹⁸

In short: auditory warnings are powerful, but only if they are meaningful, well-timed, and not overused. A rare, distinctive sound that clearly signals “immediate hazard” is more effective than a constant stream of beeps.

What “useful field of view” means at the curb

Putting UFOV, slower hazard perception, and auditory processing together gives a more realistic picture of how an older driver might experience a common scenario:

1. A cyclist or pedestrian is technically visible somewhere in the visual field.
2. Because UFOV is narrowed and other tasks compete for attention (navigation screen, signage, oncoming traffic), that road user falls outside the useful field of view—seen by the eyes but not fully processed by attention.
3. A strong, well-designed cue—visual (high-contrast lights), auditory (a salient horn or warning sound), or tactile (lane-departure vibration)—can “inject” that hazard back into the limited attentional window.

This helps explain why some external alerts feel disproportionately effective. For example, cyclists in communities with many older drivers report that a car-like horn tone is far more likely to make a driver “snap to attention” than a polite bell or a shout: the sound matches decades of learned association—horn = immediate, vehicle-related hazard—and jumps into the driver’s auditory attention channel even when their visual channel is overloaded.

That doesn’t mean every safety device should be as loud as possible. It does suggest that, especially in environments with many older drivers, high-salience, well-targeted auditory cues (from vehicles or from vulnerable road users) are an important complement to visibility and road design.

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Designing for older attention helps everyone

The aging of driver populations is not a temporary bump; it’s the new baseline. The research above points toward several practical implications:

• Road and intersection design

• Simplify sight lines and signage where possible; intersections with fewer conflict points and clearer priority reduce demands on UFOV and divided attention.¹

• Longer protected left-turn phases and shorter crossing distances help mitigate slower hazard perception and movement.

• Assessment and training

• Incorporate UFOV, Trail Making, and related cognitive measures—not just acuity charts—into fitness-to-drive assessments and targeted screening.⁸⁹

• Offer UFOV-based cognitive training programs as an optional way to extend safe driving years for older adults who wish to keep driving.¹²¹⁴

• Vehicle and HMI design

• Use clear, sparse, and meaningful warning sounds; avoid overlapping alarms that compete for attention.

• Consider age-friendly default settings for collision warnings, lane-departure alerts, and brake-assist—tuned to give slightly more lead time for older drivers without becoming annoying.¹⁷

• Vulnerable road user strategy

• For cyclists and pedestrians, especially in communities with many older drivers, combine:

• conspicuity (lights, reflective elements),

• predictable road positioning, and

• high-salience emergency alerts (flashing lights or, for cyclists, a loud, vehicle-like horn used sparingly).

• The goal is not to “fight” drivers, but to ensure you can enter their shrinking useful field of view through at least one sensory channel when it really matters.

Age-related changes in attention are inevitable. Serious crashes are not. By acknowledging how vision, cognition, and hearing actually evolve over the lifespan—and by designing roads, vehicles, and alerts that respect those changes—we can make streets safer for older drivers and for everyone who shares the road with them.

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