Citation

Wood JM. Vis. Veh. 1998; 6: 333-341.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1998, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The aim of these studies has been to investigate the effect of aging and visual impairment on driving performance and to determine whether driving performance can be predicted by laboratory-based vision tests. In this study three groups of subjects were tested including young visually normal subjects, old visually normal subjects and older subjects with visual impairment. All subjects had a current driving license and were legally eligible to drive. Visual performance was assessed using a battery of visual function tests including the Pelli-Robson chart, disability glare test, Useful Field of View (UFOV), and reaction times (RT). Driving performance was assessed on a closed-road circuit to measure peripheral awareness, maneuvering, reversing, central and peripheral RTs, speed estimation and time to complete the course. The results demonstrated that visual impairment and age had a significant effect on driving performance (p<0.05), where the subjects with visual impairment had poorer driving performance (p<0.05) than either the old or young normal subjects, and the old subjects had poorer driving performance (p<0.05) than the young. Similarly, the visual performance of the old subjects (with or without visual impairment) was significantly worse (p<0.05) than the young subjects. The older subjects had lower Pelli-Robson scores, higher disability glare, longer RTs and reduced ability on the UFOV task. A significant relationship between driving scores and visual performance on the Pelli-Robson chart and UFOV was found across the groups.