ABSTRACT
Critical driving skills allow us to safely and efficiently operate a motor vehicle in traffic. These skills have to do with how we exert control over the vehicle; how we interact with other road users and perform various driving maneuvers such as yielding, turning, changing lanes, and passing; and how we make broader decisions about trip planning and finding our way along our route. As outlined in the previous chapter, age-related declines in psychomotor, visual, and cognitive abilities can adversely affect many critical driving skills. For example, declines in head/neck flexibility and/or peripheral vision can undermine critical driving skills related to merging into traffic and changing lanes (Suen & Mitchell, 1998). Thus, efforts to help older drivers maintain safe mobility need to be based on a thorough understanding of not only the abilities that can decline with age, but also the critical skills needed for driving that can be compromised. This chapter describes some of the approaches that have been taken to describe critical driving skills including driver task analysis (McKnight & Adams, 1970), the development of a hierarchical model for driving skills and control (Michon, 1985), and recent work to extend the hierarchical model to address the interplay between critical driving skills and motives (Keskinen, 2007). Also discussed in the chapter is work to identify a set of critical driving skills that are most salient to older drivers (Eby et al., in press). Finally, the implications of declines in these skills for efforts to maintain safe mobility are reviewed.
