Mom and Dad always told you to look both ways before crossing the street, but if Grandma or Grandpa is driving down the road, you'd better look twice. A recently published study by researchers at Israel’s Ben Gurion University concluded drivers 65 and older are half as likely to notice pedestrians and other roadside hazards as drivers in the 21 to 40 age group. This is partly due to diminished peripheral vision. But that isn't the only problem, the study shows: Those 65 and older also are much less likely than younger drivers to pay attention to those pedestrians they do notice, and are slower to react when necessary.
Of course, it's not only older drivers who crash into pedestrians. "We're all suffering from cognitive overload, inappropriate allocation of attention," said Bryan Reimer, research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab in Cambridge, Mass., and associate director of the New England University Transportation Center. His research covers the causes and effects of such mental multitasking by drivers, and ways to deal with it.