Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and Older Drivers: Changes in Prevalence, Use, and Perceptions Over 3 Years of the AAA LongROAD Study

Introduction

This study had two overarching objectives: 1) examine changes in the prevalence of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) in vehicles owned by a large sample of older drivers; and 2) examine changes in how these older drivers learned to use and what they thought about ADAS. This study updates a previous research brief that investigated ADAS prevalence, use, learning, and perceived safety among older drivers at baseline in the AAA Longitudinal Research on Aging Drivers (AAA LongROAD) project (Eby et al., 2017). The present study analyzed 3 years of questionnaire data from 2,374 participants enrolled in the AAA LongROAD project. Changes in prevalence, use, learning, and perceived safety for 15 ADAS from baseline to the end of a 3-year period (Year 3) were investigated.

Key Findings

During the 3 years of follow-up, the prevalence of having one or more ADAS in the vehicles of the study participants increased from 59.0% to 72.0% and the average number of ADAS per vehicle increased from 2.0 to 3.3. Backup/parking assist was the technology with the greatest percentage point increase (from 41.5% to 58.8%), followed by blind spot warning (from 7.6% to 24.6%) and integrated Bluetooth cell phone (from 49.2% to 62.4%). Significantly more participants reported learning to use ADAS in Year 3 by figuring it out by themselves. Reported frequency of use and perceived safety of ADAS among the participants, however, remained virtually the same during the 3 years.

Methodology

Data for the study were collected from a vehicle technology questionnaire that was administered to AAA LongROAD participants at baseline and then again each time the participant changed their vehicle over a 3-year period. Fifteen ADAS (i.e., technologies installed by the vehicle manufacturer either as standard or optional equipment) were included in this study.