Relationship Between Physical Activity and Motor Vehicle Crashes Among Older Adult Drivers
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Summary
This study investigates whether self-reported physical activity levels are associated with motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) among older adult drivers. With approximately 42 million licensed drivers aged 65 and older in the United States, this demographic faces a 16% higher likelihood of fatal, at-fault crashes compared to younger drivers. While physical activity is known to mitigate chronic conditions linked to driving impairment, such as cognitive decline and musculoskeletal issues, it remains unclear if increased activity directly reduces crash rates. The authors aimed to determine if vigorous or moderate physical activity correlates with fewer self-reported MVCs in the preceding year. The research utilized cross-sectional baseline data from the LongROAD study, a multisite prospective cohort involving 2,990 older adult drivers (aged 65–79) recruited from five U.S. locations between 2015 and 2017. Participants completed questionnaires assessing demographics, health behaviors, and driving history, including the number of MVCs in the past year. Physical activity was categorized as vigorous (≥6 metabolic equivalents, e.g., running, cycling) or moderate (3–6 metabolic equivalents, e.g., gardening, walking). The study employed multivariate logistic regression to analyze the association between physical activity and MVCs. To address confounding, the researchers constructed a directed acyclic graph (DAG) to identify minimal sufficient adjustment sets, controlling for variables such as age, cognitive health, depression, social support, study site, and unsafe driving behaviors. Missing data, affecting 17% of observations, were handled using multiple imputation. The results indicated that 41.2% of participants engaged in vigorous activity and 69.6% in moderate activity at least once per week, while 11.2% reported at least one MVC in the previous year. Neither vigorous nor moderate physical activity was significantly associated with self-reported MVCs in either bivariate or adjusted multivariate analyses. However, several other factors showed significant associations with crash involvement. In the final adjusted model, self-reported unsafe driving practices (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 1.55, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.05–2.29) and a history of falls in the past 12 months (adjusted OR 1.38, 95% CI 1.07–1.77) were positively associated with MVCs. Additionally, participants with an associate’s or bachelor’s degree were less likely to report crashes compared to those with graduate degrees (adjusted OR 0.72, 95% CI 0.54–0.97), and those reporting "good" hearing had lower crash odds than those with "excellent" hearing (adjusted OR 0.74, 95% CI 0.56–0.97). The study concludes that self-reported physical activity is not significantly associated with MVCs among older drivers, suggesting that physical activity alone may not be a sufficient predictor of driving safety in this population. The authors note that the lack of association may stem from the use of self-reported activity measures, which can be subject to bias, and recommend future research using objective measures of physical activity. The findings highlight that unsafe driving behaviors and fall history are more robust predictors of crash risk than physical activity levels, implying that interventions aimed at enhancing driving safety for older adults should prioritize behavioral modifications and fall prevention rather than focusing solely on physical fitness.
Key finding
Neither vigorous nor moderate self-reported physical activity was significantly associated with motor vehicle crashes among older adult drivers in the previous year.
Methodology
field_study
Sample size: 2990
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via author_sweep_intake on 2026-05-27 (2 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | author_sweep | — | — | 3 | 2026-05-28 |
| archive | success | core_acuk | — | — | 3 | 2026-06-04 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| enrich | skipped | — | — | — | 3 | 2026-06-04 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-04 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 15 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
Topics
Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.
- sex gender
- incidence prevalence
- older drivers
- demographic disparities
- exposure measurement
- induced exposure
Information type
What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).
- Empirical Findings: crash risk outcomes, observational prevalence
- Methodological Resource: dataset resource