Abstract
Although advanced age is generally accompanied by a decline in physical and mental attributes related to cognition, decision-making and mobility, few elderly people recognize how far their visual, cognitive and decision performance have declined since their youth. This lack of awareness is a major cause of accidents. Especially, elderly traffic accidents are related to several cognitive functions, such as divided attention, spatial recognition, planning and execution, etc. In this study, we have developed a method to evaluate cognitive functions of the elderly while driving, and have made a simple driving simulator. Elderly cognitive functions, which are divided into 5 levels (level-1: traffic accident, level-2, 3, 4: near miss cases, level-5: safe driving), are evaluated by driver performances in simulated driving. Some experiments by elderly drivers have largely showed the validity of this method and driving simulator.
