Drivers over 70 are keeping their licenses longer and driving more than earlier generations, a trend that has led to dire predictions about car accident risks for aging baby boomers.

But new research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety should ease those fears. It shows that fatal car accidents involving older drivers have actually declined markedly in the past decade.

“It’s not what people had expected to see,” said Anne T. McCartt, senior vice president for research at the insurance institute. “There were some studies, including our own research, that had predicted older driver crashes would become a bigger and bigger problem.”

Compared with middle-aged drivers (age 35 to 54), drivers 75 or older have far higher death rates per mile traveled. (So do drivers under 20.) Death rates jump markedly after age 80. But that does not necessarily mean that older people are worse drivers or that they are far more likely to crash.

Car fatalities involving young people are almost entirely explained by the fact that they have more accidents than experienced drivers. But while crash rates are slightly higher for older people, most of their increased risk for a fatal car accident is explained by the fact that they tend to be more frail. Older drivers are more likely to suffer a severe injury, particularly to the chest, or other medical complications.

But fatalities per capita among older people have decreased 35 percent since 1975 and are now at their lowest level. And while fatal crashes are declining over all, the rates for older driving deaths are falling the fastest. Between 1997 and 2006, the annual decline in fatal crash rates was 0.18 fewer fatal crashes per 100,000 middle-aged licensed drivers. By comparison, the annual decline for drivers age 70 to 74 was 0.55 fatal crashes per 100,000 licensed drivers, and for those over 80 it was 1.33.

Older drivers are also less likely to cause drunken driving accidents. In 2007, just 6 percent of drivers 70 and older who died in crashes had blood-alcohol levels above the legal limit. The figure for fatally injured drivers age 16 to 59 was 41 percent.

The insurance institute is conducting further research to determine why the risks appear to be going down for older drivers. It may be that today’s older drivers are simply in better physical and mental shape than their counterparts a decade ago, so they are not only less likely to make a driving mistake, but also less frail and better able to survive injuries.

It may also be that driving patterns among older adults have changed, leading to more highway driving, which is safer than driving on local roads. Older drivers may be more likely than in the past to wear a seat belt or to drive a safer car.

Research suggests education campaigns have increased awareness about older driving risks.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins recently reported results of the Salisbury Eye Evaluation and Driving Study (Seeds for short), which looked at vision, cognition and health changes among 1,200 licensed drivers age 67 to 87. The study, published in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, found that after a year 1.5 percent of the drivers had given up driving on their own, and 3.4 percent more had voluntarily restricted their driving because of declining vision.

“We’re intent on doing research to try to figure out why we’re seeing this,” Dr. McCartt said. “It’s certainly a possibility that older drivers compared to 10 or 20 years ago are in better condition in various ways.”

When she started wearing hearing aids, journalism instructor Grace Lim discovered the toll her hearing loss had taken on family and friends.

By Grace Lim

Two months after my 44th birthday, I embarked on a series of routine medical checkups that included a hearing test. I told the audiologist how mumblers appeared to have taken over the world: my yoga teacher, my husband, the college students who take my journalism classes. They all mumbled.

Before hearing aids, instructor Grace Lim had trouble hearing students. (Photo by Megan Sheridan)

She listened, nodded, compassion in her eyes, and said, “It’s not them.” Three tiny words, followed by two even more devastating ones. “It’s you.”

That was the day I learned that I had a moderate to severe hearing loss. It should have been obvious to me all these years, but somehow I didn’t notice. I watch TV with subtitles and the volume cranked up. My sons, ages 12 and 9, often say “Never mind” because I have so often asked them to repeat themselves. And for years, I’ve accused my husband of sneaking up on me. “I live here,” he says with exasperation, but has nonetheless learned to announce himself every time he enters a room so he doesn’t startle me. In the large auditorium where I teach one of my classes, I constantly stop my students midsentence so I can run up and down the aisles to get within hearing distance.

My hearing loss appears to be genetic. My mother and grandmother both have hearing loss, but I had always thought it was due to normal aging. But my level of hearing loss at a relatively young age suggests hearing problems run in my family.

After my hearing tests, the audiologist told me that the decibel level at which I am comfortable hearing is twice that of a normal person. When she demonstrated the normal decibel level, I was shocked. It was as if I had been placed into a Charlie Brown TV world where grown-ups spoke in an unintelligible muffled language. Read more…

Many older people feel years younger than they really are. (Chris Maynard for The New York Times)

Seventy is the new 57.

Older people feel, on average, about 13 years younger than they really are, according to a new study of aging from the University of Michigan and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

Researchers surveyed 516 people between the ages of 70 and 104 who were taking part in the ongoing Berlin Aging Study in Germany, asking a series of aging-related questions, including how old they typically feel compared to the age on their birth certificate. Although individual responses varied, the average gap between chronological age and subjective age was 13 years. Among study participants who were particularly healthy and active, Read more…

The majority of people diagnosed with cancer are over 65, but most major cancer studies exclude them, leaving a wide gap in knowledge about how best to treat older patients.

The knowledge gap about older cancer patients was highlighted recently by researchers from Barcelona who studied the role that age played in the prognosis of 224 cancer patients.

According to the National Cancer Institute, 60 percent of newly diagnosed cancers are found in people over the age of 65. Overall, people in this age group are 10 times more likely to get cancer, and 15 times more likely to die from the disease, than are people under the age of 65.

But even though most cancer patients are older, age is typically not the deciding factor in whether someone survives the illness, the Spanish researchers showed. Read more…

As my colleagues over at the Rings blog point out, there are some oldies but goodies at this year’s Olympics.

French cyclist Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli, 49, after winning her 53rd elite-level title last month. (Jeff Pachoud/AFP /Getty Images)

The list includes:

• Dara Torres, 41, American swimmer
• Jeannie Long-Ciprelli, 49, French cyclist
• Haile Satayin, 48 or 53, Israeli marathoner (his age depends on whether you use the age from his papers from Ethiopia, where he was born, or his Israeli passport)
• Luan Jujie, 50, Canadian fencer
• Susan Nattras, 57, Canadian trap shooter
• Laurie Lever, 60, Australian equestrian team
• Ian Millar, 61, Canadian show jumper
• Hiroshi Hoketsu, 67, Japanese dressage rider

Dr. Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic told Canada’s National Post that it’s not just the athletes’ physical strength, but their mental strength, that sets them apart.

“The message that these people tell us, whether it’s Gordie Howe, George Foreman, Dara Torres or any of these people, is that if people become obsessed with what they can’t do as they age, well then they won’t do it,” he told the paper. “These individuals are more interested with what they can do.”

Dr. Joyner notes that the physical capacity of most people is diminished at a rate of about 10 percent per decade after 30 years of age, while that of the extremely fit decreases at a rate of about 3 to 4 percent.

Read more about these amazing athletes on the highly-entertaining Rings blog here.

The gals who meet for coffee may have a leg up on maintaining their memory. (Joshua Lott for The New York Times)

An active social life appears to delay memory loss as we age, a new study shows.

The finding, which appears in the July issue of The American Journal of Public Health, suggests that strong social ties, through friends, family and community groups, can preserve our brain health as we age and that social isolation may be an important risk factor for cognitive decline in the elderly. Read more…

Today’s special Well guide offers readers head-to-toe advice for healthy aging. Whether you’re worried about your heart, expanding waistline, wrinkles or aching feet, you’ll find answers to some of your most pressing health problems.

To read the full report, go to www.nytimes.com/wellguide and be sure to check out the online options. Click to find memory games, health quizzes and cool three-dimensional graphics around the Web. And when you’re done, take the Well quiz below to test your body knowledge.

To take the quiz, click here.

Keeping an aging brain active may stall mental decline. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

Brain health among older Americans appears to be getting better.

Compared to aging adults in the 1990s, people over 70 today may have a lower risk for serious memory problems, including Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, according to a new study that examined mental function among more than 14,000 people over a decade. While the reasons for the apparent decline aren’t known, the brain boost may be explained by the fact that older Americans today are better educated, wealthier and have improved cardiovascular health compared to similarly-aged adults in the 1990s.

“The study suggests that it’s important to keep your mind active, not just in formal education in early life, but with reading and talking with friends and staying connected with the world through volunteering and social networks,’’ said lead author Dr. Kenneth Langa, associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan. “We think that’s part of the story of keeping your brain healthy and working against cognitive decline and dementia.’’ Read more…

Can walking keep your mind young? (Robert Caplin for The New York Times)

For people in their 60s, regular walking appears to lower the risk of dementia.

The finding, published this week in the medical journal Neurology, is the latest study to show that exercise helps delay some of the worst ravages of aging for both the body and the mind.

The recent research tracked the exercise habits of 749 men and women in Italy who were over age 65 and were in good health, with no indication of memory problems at the beginning of the study. After four years, they found that the most-frequent walkers had a 27 percent lower risk for developing vascular dementia than those people who walked the least.

What’s important about the study is that it again shows exercise doesn’t have to be excruciating to reap the benefits. “It’s important to note that an easy-to-perform moderate activity like walking provided the same cognitive benefits as other, more demanding activities,” said study author Dr. Giovanni Ravaglia of University Hospital S. Orsola Malpighi, in Bologna, Italy. Read more…

What does growing older look like?

A video from New York artist Jonathan Keller gives you a glimpse. Every day for more than eight years he has taken a photo of himself. The result is a striking time-lapse video depicting a man in his 20s turning into a man in his 30s.

The video is missing 239 days in late 1999 and early 2000 because Mr. Keller was in Antarctica. But on his Web site, he vows never again to miss a day of photo taking. The video, which currently only shows pictures through Oct. 1, 2006, is called “Living My Life Faster.” Mr. Keller’s Web site also includes still shots of many of the pictures.

“The project will continue until the day I die. Only then will it be complete, and worth its true value,” he writes. “Hopefully the completion date is far off, but you never know, right? Unfortunately, I won’t ever see it finished. It’s really a heckuva Catch-22 I’ve set up for myself.”

Women often stick with skin creams that don’t work. (Robert Caplin for The New York Times)

The less effective a beauty product or treatment, the more likely women are to keep using it.

That’s what researchers found after interviewing nearly 300 women, ages 27 to 65, who were trying to achieve a more youthful appearance by using creams, vitamins and other beauty treatments. Surprisingly, women were more loyal to products and treatments when they didn’t work than when they did.

Researchers from the University of Bath, in England, and Qatar University studied women who had used various beauty treatments in the past year. The majority of the women had used anti-aging skin care and moisturizing products as well as vitamins. About half had used salon anti-aging treatments, and about a third had adopted special diets. About 3 percent had medical treatments such as Botox or chemical peels.

They found that among women who felt that the treatments were not working, only 27 percent had stopped using the products; the rest said they wanted to continue using them. But among women who felt the treatments were successful, 55 percent had stopped using them. Read more…

Carrying extra weight can do a number on your knees. (Jodi Hilton for The New York Times)

For people carrying extra pounds, the news last week was good. Obesity doesn’t increase cancer risk, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported.

But that doesn’t mean it’s time to celebrate a fuller figure. The same issue of JAMA reported that old age is a particularly treacherous time for the obese. Obese people over age 60 are twice as likely to have some sort of disability as older people of normal weight, the study found. Read more…

Mapping Memory (NGM.com)

This month, National Geographic has a fascinating cover story on memory and why brains sometimes remember things and often forget. It starts off with a woman who remembers almost every minute of every day of her life since the age of 11, as well as a man whose brain, riddled by disease, knows nothing but the present.

After you read the article, be sure and check out the cool three-dimensional Mapping Memory graphic. It’s worth clicking around the entire image, but don’t miss the “forgetting” tab. It offers an unforgettable, albeit scary, glimpse of how memory loss progresses with age. The first image you’ll see is Read more…