What is the Motor Vehicle Accident Course for Senior Citizens?
All insurance companies in the state of Ohio offer a car insurance discount to people who are at least sixty years old, when they complete the Motor Vehicle Accident Prevention Course. Some insurance companies offer the discount to those who are fifty.

What does the program involve?
The program includes eight hours of classroom work and a thirty minutes demonstration drive with an instructor. The classroom and demonstration drive cover the following topics:

• Crash Prevention
• Defensive Driving Techniques
• Visual Lead Time
• Communication
• Adjusted Speed Margin of Safety
• Effects of Aging
• Methods of Compensating for the Effects of Aging
• Alcohol and Drug Use as a Crash Factor
• Motor Vehicle Inspection
• Vehicle Systems and Vehicle Maintenance
• The in-car demonstration covers: starting, right/left turns, backing and stopping

When are classes?
Classes will be held when nine or more people register who can attend the same two four-hour classroom sessions or four two-hour sessions. Classes can be scheduled in any combination of morning, afternoon and evening sessions.

How can a person register?
The program can be arranged in several ways.

• You can call the KDS office and identify when it would be best to attend a class (morning, afternoon, or evening). KDS will then call when enough people have asked for a class at that preferred time of day. 
• You can get your friends together and arrange for the class as a group. Make a party of it. Group discounts are available.

Cost?
The fee for this course is $45. Participants who register with a group receive a discount of $5 each. A minimum of 9 people is needed to conduct the course. 

Does a person need to pass a test?
Participants have to pass a simple written test with a seventy-five percent score and take a short demonstration drive in a KDS car.

To pass the demonstration drive, participants must drive within marked lanes, stay in appropriate lanes when turning, exercise the proper use of turn signals, maintain the proper stopping distance at intersections, exercise vigilance for other traffic, and wear their seat belts.

Participants can retake the written test at no charge after attending the sessions pertaining to the areas of need. The demonstration drive may be retaken with an additional charge. Adult driving instruction is available before or after the demonstration drive for those wishing to refine their skills.

How is the demonstration drive scheduled?
The demonstration drive can be scheduled after the classroom phase of the program has been completed. This phase of the program can be scheduled at the convenience of each participant. Home pickup can be arranged for an additional fee.

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The mature operator group is defined as including drivers aged 50 years and above. These drivers comprise about 29% of the total driving population. This proportion will continue to increase until the year 2020.

Age related problems that are known to affect driver performance do not occur in all people at the same time or to the same degree. Physiological changes occur at different stages of life, with many changes beginning even before people reach licensing age. For instance, the eye's ability to focus, peaks at about age 10. Hearing ability usually peaks at 10-15 years of age. Other gradual changes begin early in the driving career; visual acuity begins to decline in the mid- to late 20's, and the eye's field of vision starts to narrow in the late 30's. These and other physiological changes generally accelerate after age 50. Overall, age related problems--both physiological and psychological--usually become profound enough to affect driving performance around age 60.

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Some problems that may occur include:

• Maintaining proper matching of speed to traffic conditions, entering and exiting freeways at the proper speed, slowing down unexpectedly. 
• Observing behind, checking mirrors, making head checks. 
• Responding appropriately to traffic signs and signals, recognizing newer traffic signs and signals, adjusting to altered traffic patterns and roadway design.

In many ways the typical accident involving mature operators is not atypical of accidents in general. The majority occur under ideal conditions on clear days, on straight, dry pavement. Also fitting into the accident norm for general driving population is the fact that most mature operator accidents occur at intersections, within 15 miles of home.

The mature operator accident departs from the norm in several ways. Nine out of ten of the accidents involving mature operators are multiple vehicle accidents. These accidents less frequently involve above average speeds than similar accidents among younger drivers with the result that the crashes are less serious in terms of vehicle damage. The injury rate of mature operators involved in accidents is higher than would be expected. Severity of injury may be attributed to older persons' reduced ability to withstand and recuperate from crash induced trauma.

Crashes involving mature operators also differ from their younger counterparts in that they are more likely to be held at fault. The most commonly cited performance error among mature operators is failure to yield. Other frequent citations include failure to obey traffic signs and signals and careless intersection crossing. Changing direction unsafely represents a second major error for mature operators. Common charges in this area are improper turns, inaccurate turning (left turns especially), and careless or improper lane changing. A final category of accident type -- careless backing -- is very strongly associated with mature operators.

*Key Driving School, Inc. * De;ta, Napoleon and Whitehouse, Ohio, USA*