Traffic Safety
A Top Priority
The safety of Canadian motorists has always been a top priority for CAA, and we take pride in providing information on safe driving for drivers and their families. We also aim to help ensure safer drivers on safer roads in safer vehicles.
Aging Drivers
As Canada’s population ages, the challenges that older drivers face will touch the lives of more and more Canadians and the need to address these challenges will become more urgent.
By 2026, one in every five Canadians will be over the age of 65. However, rather than limiting the mobility of aging drivers, we need to find solutions that meet the needs of all drivers to ensure our roads are safe for everyone involved.
CAA supports strategies that take into account our aging population, including developing an ability-based licensing program, rather than one based solely on age; improvements to road and highway design that generates more forgiving roads and changes in vehicle design that make allowances for the needs of aging drivers. Education on driver and road safety for aging drivers and their family members to help identify diminished driving competence before road crash incidents occur is also very important in a balanced approach to traffic safety.
To help educate aging drivers, their friends and families, CAA has created a web site called Helping Aging Drivers. This new site features online tools and resources to help drivers to identify diminished driving capacity and help motorists stay behind the wheel as long as is safely possible.
Carfit
While automotive engineers have begun to address issues for aging drivers, purchasing a new car is not the only way to reduce the physical stresses that accompany driving. CAA has developed an online tool that demonstrates how you can improve how your car ‘fits.’Click here for more details.
Check Your Own Performance
You can Check Your Own Performance behind the wheel using our on-line quiz. By answering these questions honestly, you will help to locate those areas where your physical and mental abilities call for a change in your driving habits and skills. At the end of the quiz, you will be offered suggestions to improve your weaker driving skills. Your answers are confidential and won't be recorded.
This online quiz should not replace actual driving tests.
Distracted Driving
Driver distraction is one of the most common contributors to traffic crashes, and something that affects all road users.
Not just an issue of drivers using cellular phones, distractions from driving come in all forms; managing children, personal grooming, changing the radio station in the car, eating and drinking— even talking to a passenger.
Distractions cause drivers to react more slowly to traffic conditions or events, such as a making a left turn or pulling out from a side road. Distracted drivers fail more often to recognize potential hazards, including pedestrians, bicycles or debris in the road. They also decrease their margin of safety, leading them to take risks they might not otherwise take.
All drivers should be educated on the effect of multi-tasking while driving, and the resulting cumulative cognitive and physical distractions. Driver education that addresses the full range of distractions leading to crashes, as well as measures to manage those distractions effectively and safely, is a priority.
CAA is challenging motorists, passengers, employers and vehicle manufacturers and technology developers to identify, understand, and reduce or eliminate distractions from the driving experience through education, awareness, policies and modified behaviours.
To help educate road users on driver distraction, its causes, implications and how to become a safer driver, CAA has created a new web site Driven to Distraction.
International Conference on Distracted Driving
To determine the most appropirate solutions to combat distracted driving, CAA co-hosted the first International Conference on Distracted Driving from October 2 – 5, 2005 in Toronto. To read more about presenters and conference results, please go to www.distracteddriving.ca