GPS navigation assistance is associated with driving mobility in older drivers

Morrissey, Sol, Jeffs, Stephen, Gillings, Rachel, Khondoker, Mizanur, Varshney, Anuraj, Fisher-Morris, Mary, Manley, Ed and Hornberger, Michael (2025) GPS navigation assistance is associated with driving mobility in older drivers. PLOS Digital Health, 4 (4). ISSN 2767-3170

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Abstract

Maintaining driving mobility is essential for maintaining independence and wellbeing within older age. However, cognitive decline caused by age-related neurophysiological changes typically causes older drivers to self-regulate their driving and reduce their driving mobility. Electronic navigation assistance technologies, such as Sat-Nav, are increasingly popular amongst older drivers and can potentially alleviate cognitive demands amongst older drivers to enhance driving mobility. Yet despite the growing usage of navigation assistance technologies amongst older drivers, little research has been conducted to establish how and when they are used by older drivers, and it is not known whether they can offset cognitive decline to promote driving mobility. 895 older drivers (mean age: 71.04) were recruited for a prospective cohort study. Participants self-reported their navigation assistance usage as well as their driving mobility (frequency, space), before completing objective cognitive assessments (allocentric and egocentric orientation, recognition and source memory) and a subjective spatial orientation ability questionnaire. We establish profiles of older driver navigation assistance usage, showing that a considerable majority of older drivers use navigation assistance - with the majority using it for some journeys, and most commonly for the entire journey to a new destination. We show that navigation assistance usage is associated with worse subjective orientation ability, but not objective cognitive performance, and is positively associated with greater driving mobility. Importantly, we demonstrate that within individuals with poor wayfinding ability, navigation assistance usage is associated with increased driving mobility. In conclusion, navigation assistance usage is associated with increased driving mobility within healthy older drivers and is relied upon more by individuals with lower wayfinding confidence. As navigation assistance devices can specifically enhance driving frequency in individuals with worse wayfinding ability, who are more likely to reduce their driving, they should be recommended to older adults and integrated into comprehensive strategies for promoting driving independence in the older adult population.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data Availability: The dataset underlying the findings for this study, as well as the raw cognitive data underlying the summary statistics, has been made available at Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/jf2t8/). Funding: This work was supported by the UK Department for Transport (grant number: R208830). This study is supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration East of England (NIHR ARC EoE) at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. S. Morrissey’s studentship is jointly funded by the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, University of East Anglia (United Kingdom), and the Earle and Stuart Charitable Trust. There was no additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. © 2025 Morrissey et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	health informatics ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2700/2718
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > School of Health Sciences Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Nutrition and Preventive Medicine Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Lifespan Health Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Norwich Epidemiology Centre Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Norwich Epidemiology Centre Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Statistics Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Epidemiology and Public Health Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Population Health Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Norwich Institute for Healthy Aging Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Mental Health
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	16 Jun 2025 09:30
Last Modified:	22 Jun 2025 06:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99503
DOI:	10.1371/journal.pdig.0000768

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