Effect of Luminance on Night Driving Performance of Younger-old and Older-old Adults

ABSTRACT Little research has been conducted to understand the difference in driving performance between younger-old adults (60-75 years) and older-old adults (76+ years), or simply younger olds and older olds. The main objective of this study was to determine if a minimal increase in road light level (luminance) differently affects the performance of these two distinct age groups. Older adults were tested in a driving simulator following vision and cognitive screening. Comparisons were made for the performance of simulated night driving of the two age groups under two road light conditions (0.6 cd/m 2 and 2.5 cd/m 2 ). At each light level, the effects of participant age were examined along with the vision/cognitive performance. It was found that increasing road light level from 0.6 cd/m 2 to 2.5 cd/m 2 resulted in different effects on night driving performance depending on the age of the participant. It is concluded that while increasing road lighting may be helpful to some older adults, younger and older olds vary in terms of cognition, attention, and confidence and these factors need to be considered in road lighting design.