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The Lane Ranger, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Friday, January 8, 1999
Test could gauge when it's time to turn in the keys
By Joey Ledford
As our population ages, might there someday be a need for a test to determine when the elderly should turn over their car keys?
Michael Cantor, an Atlanta experimental psychologist and former psychology instructor at Columbia University, believes he has the test.
Longtime Ranger readers might remember Cantor, who has devised a paper and pencil test that you can take in four minutes and determine with a high degree of certainty whether you're likely to crash you car.
The test calls for you to connect marked boxes spread across a page--1 to A to 2 to B, etc. Cantor times you as you work.
It measures two factors, including channel capacity, which is your ability to process information at speed. It also measures situational awareness, which I liken to court sense in basketball, the ability to see the big picture, not only immediately bur over time.
If you're not likely to crash, your channel capacity level tends to match your situational awareness.
Take teenagers, the age group other than the elderly that Cantor see great potential in testing. Channel capacity tends to peak at age 17, he said.
"When you have high channel, it just makes sense to drive fast," he said of teens. Unfortunately, the situational awareness doesn't match up so they tend to crash. and sure enough, notes Cantor, 36 percent of male drivers 16 to 20 killed in crashes in 1996 were speeding.
Back to the elderly. the National Highway Safety Administration is evaluating Cantor's test to see if it is a fair way to test seniors' driving competence. Seniors instinctively know their channel capacity has declined, so they tend to drive slower, he said, citing his 84-year old mother as an example of a very safe driver who understand her limitations.
"It's very important that what goes out there is the very best we can come up with," he said, since errors would "steal people's independence unnecessarily. So we want something that's deadly accurate."
So far, there's no indication the government will push for such a test to weed out hazardous senior drivers, but Cantor said he believes it is inevitable as millions of baby boomers join the ranks of the elderly in coming years.
He's given the test to 6,000 people of all ages thus far, including truckers, airline pilots, bus drivers, NASCAR drivers, and soldiers. He cited one NASCAR racer, who he declined to name, whose score indicates a high likelihood of crashing.
"He's a guy who either wins or crashes ," Cantor laughed.
Pilots earn their money, said Cantor, in how they respond during those roughly five minutes a year when lives are on the line--in bad weather, low visibility, during equipment failures with the tower distracting them.
"Drivers are the same way," he said. "It's at the moment of truth where the guy in front slams on his brakes. That's what this test measures--your ability to cope with the moment of truth."
He's discovered some surprising gender differences. Women tend to have higher channel capacity during most of the adult years, which would suggest faster driving and more accidents. But men actually have far more accidents."
"On the test [women] not as impulsive," he said. "They won't rush in where males will. But their sustained attention is less [than men]."
Cantor said he's been criticized in the academic community for not publishing articles on his techniques and findings.
"I'm taking the Coca-Cola approach," he said. "Trademark the name, build the brand and keep the formula secret."
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