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. 2019 Feb;38(2):277-289.
doi: 10.1177/0733464817690679. Epub 2017 Jan 29.

A Naturalistic Study of Driving Behavior in Older Adults and Preclinical Alzheimer Disease: A Pilot Study

Ganesh M Babulal  1 , Sarah H Stout  1 , Tammie L S Benzinger  1 , Brian R Ott  2 , David B Carr  1 , Mollie Webb  1 , Cindy M Traub  1 , Aaron Addison  1 , John C Morris  1 , David K Warren  1 , Catherine M Roe  1
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A Naturalistic Study of Driving Behavior in Older Adults and Preclinical Alzheimer Disease: A Pilot Study

Ganesh M Babulal et al. J Appl Gerontol. 2019 Feb.

Abstract

A clinical consequence of symptomatic Alzheimer's disease (AD) is impaired driving performance. However, decline in driving performance may begin in the preclinical stage of AD. We used a naturalistic driving methodology to examine differences in driving behavior over one year in a small sample of cognitively normal older adults with ( n = 10) and without ( n = 10) preclinical AD. As expected with a small sample size, there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups, but older adults with preclinical AD drove less often, were less likely to drive at night, and had fewer aggressive behaviors such as hard braking, speeding, and sudden acceleration. The sample size required to power a larger study to determine differences was calculated.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; driving; naturalistic methodology; older adults.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Box plots with distributions of scores, medians, and interquartile ranges for the total number of trips, mean miles per trip, and number of trips with any aggressive behaviors captured with the DRIVES chip during the 1-year pilot study. Note. DRIVES = driving real-world in-vehicle evaluation system; PiB = Pittsburgh compound B.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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