Driving with Your Brain
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
Some time back I wrote about the cognitive skills necessary for safe driving. It’s ever more clear that abilities such as vision, reaction times, attention, judgment and ability to multitask, that is, to focus on more than one task at a time are all essential to our ability to be safe on the road. As we age, our brains do change, and one of the normal changes is that our ability to multitask decreases. Elderly drivers need to pay attention on the road and not use the phone—especially dialing numbers. (This is true for younger drivers as well, but is a much harder sell, I’m afraid). This month, the Dana Foundation summarizes some recent articles on this topic that’s worth a read here.
