Ageing and performance in professional bus driving - A case study from Chile

The influence of age on driving is of great concern worldwide. Also, older people who are involved in traffic are more vulnerable than younger people, thus in the event of a traffic accident, they are at greater risk of dying. The purpose of this article is to explore the association between age and driving performance of professional bus drivers. A negative binomial regression model and the incidence rate ratio was used to explore the association between variables. The population studied consisted of the company records from 2005 to 2021, with 515 professional bus drivers. We found that the age of professional bus drivers was related to a statistically significant 4 % decrease in self-report of replacement requests. Also, we found that the incidence rate ratio of speeding in professional bus drivers aged 45-59 years and 60-77 years was 1.41 and 1.8 times the incidence of bus drivers aged 28-44 years. Bus drivers' age was related to a statistically significant 2 % increase in the incidence of minor accidents. Finally, results show a 1 % decrease in incidence of accidents for every one year of age in the group of professional drivers. However, that association was not statistically significant. Older drivers are more likely to engage in minor accidents and speeding-related violations than younger drivers. Additionally, an infrequent use of the fatigue management tool by older drivers was confirmed during the analyzed period. Thus, we concluded that education and training are needed to decrease the observed trends.