I read an interesting science paper published in the Journal of Gerontology. Dr. Sheila West and her colleagues from Johns Hopkins University asked older drivers to volunteer to have their cars rigged with cameras and GPS systems to monitor their driving over a five-day period. They recruited 1,425 drivers aged 67 to 85. Specifically the…
Cognitive ability is a critical measure of safe driving … understanding that point the way toward improving our ability to deal with the many distractions beyond texting that we can’t eliminate or legislate.
I am disappointed that distracted driving has been myopically defined as “texting while driving” … we are missing an opportunity to make a dent in the 6 million annual crashes in the US.
I just saw an article in Scientific American about why brain speed is important, how it decays as we age, and what the effects are on daily life over time. But this is nothing new: we have been talking about brain speed for years! Some highlights from the article include: “Studies suggest that the speed of information processing…
Insurance companies have the capability to offer brain performance improvement software, DriveSharp, that increases safety and reduces costs. What’s in the way of offering it to everyone?
A long-term research study followed over 900 older adults for five years and saw those who trained with Posit Science’s speed-of-processing technology reduced at-fault crash by 50%.
Our eyes take in a lot of information from the world, but limitations in brain processing means that we can only pay attention to a small portion of it. As a consequence we often fail to notice important information that is clearly in our field of view because our attention is focused elsewhere. One compelling…
Improving the speed and accuracy of processing what you see is gaining traction thanks to insurance carriers and increasing public awareness.
Ed. note: Today we are pleased to present a guest post from Beth Tracton-Bishop, Ph.D, a gerontologist with The Hartford Advance 50 Team and an expert on aging and driver safety. Click on her name above for a full biography. Have you ever heard of the phrase “driving wellness”? It’s a relatively new term that…
The brain fitness market has expanded rapidly in recent years, and there is now a large selection of computer and on-line brain training exercises to choose from. At one end of the spectrum are games that are purely for entertainment purposes. At the other end are exercises that have been scientifically validated in clinical trials.…