"Retirement Vehicles" Raise Crash Death Risk.

• Position: ELDERLY DRIVERS

Older drivers, who are less likely to survive severe crashes than any other age group, also tend to drive outdated vehicles that lack crucial safety features, indicate studies from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Arlington, Va.

Healthier than ever before, Americans in their 70s and 80s are driving more miles and crashing less often than in past decades, but age-related fragility still makes older drivers less likely to survive crashes than other demographics. Drivers 75 and older are about four times as likely to die as middle-aged drivers when they are involved in a side-impact crash and about three times as likely to die in a frontal crash, a previous IIHS study found.

Two new studies show that drivers 70 and over tend to drive older, smaller vehicles that are not equipped with important safety features. The first study compared the vehicles driven by 1,500,-000 crash-involved Florida drivers ages 35-54 and 70 and older over 2014-18. The second surveyed 900 drivers in those age groups from various states about the factors that influenced their most recent vehicle purchase.

"Persuading older drivers to take another look at the vehicles they're driving could reduce crash fatalities substantially," says Jessica Cicchino, IIHS vice president of research and a coauthor of both studies. "One big challenge is that, for those on a fixed income, cost often overrides other concerns."

The study of Florida crashes found that drivers in their 70s and older were significantly more likely to be driving vehicles that were at least 16 years old than drivers ages 35-54. The older drivers also were substantially less likely to be driving vehicles less than three years old.

In addition, as driver age increased, vehicles were less likely to be equipped with electronic stability control (ESC) and head-protecting side airbags as standard features. Vehicles without ESC were associated with 37% higher odds of driver fatality for drivers 70 and over, while vehicles without standard head-protecting side airbags were associated with double the odds of an older driver fatality.

Sedans and hatchbacks also were more common among older drivers, with the proportion of people driving midsize passenger cars increasing and the numbers driving SUVs declining with age. Along with vehicle design and safety features, vehicle size and weight are important factors in crash survival, since the occupants of smaller vehicles are exposed to greater forces in collisions...