Grant: Team Grant: CCNA Phase III: Research Teams

Deciding when someone with dementia should stop driving is a major challenge in dementia care. While dementia can impact driving safety, a diagnosis does not automatically mean someone must stop driving-many individuals in the early stages can continue to drive safely for some time. Currently, the most depended on way to assess driving safety is through on-road driving assessments at specialized driving assessment centres. These tests are often unavailable, expensive, and may not accurately represent everyday driving behaviour. Our research seeks to create better tools for assessing driving safety in people with memory and thinking challenges. To do this, first, we will collect real-world driving information using easily installed sensors in a person's own car. This will allow us to analyze how driving behaviour varies among adults without memory and thinking issues, those with mild memory and thinking concerns, and individuals in the early stages of dementia. We will also monitor changes in driving over time to track how they change in relation to changes in memory and thinking. Additionally, we will explore whether walking tests that challenge both movement and thinking, which can be done in doctor's offices, offer clues about driving skills. Finally, we will also study whether real-world driving information is consistent with information from existing tools that predict crash risks in older drivers. By building the largest collections of real-world driving information in individuals with varying levels of memory and thinking abilities, our goal is to develop a fair, available, and effective approach to assessing driving skills to support individuals with memory and thinking problems, their families and doctors in making informed decisions about driving safety.