Insurance co. testing brain fitness software on older drivers

The Allstate insurance company is testing a program where drivers over 50 play a videogame designed to improve their driving abilities and reduce the number of accidents. According to a Chicago Tribune article, the software exercises visual processing speed and precision. If successful, the company may offer discounts to customers who go through the training. Over at SharpBrains, brain fitness consultant Alvaro Fernandez interviews Tom Warden, who runs Allstate's Research and Planning Center. From SharpBrains:

(Fernandez:) How will you measure success, and by when will you know if your expectations are met?
(Warden:) Given that we have already started recruiting participants and training may start as soon as next week, we may have some interesting results by the end of March 2009 or perhaps during the summer. In order to have statistically meaningful numbers, we will have to see how many people enroll in the study and the size of the observed impact. We will analyze the program compliance rates since this type of intervention needs to be engaging enough for people to devote a number of hours to at home. But, at the end of the day, what we want to see is whether using the program will translate into lower accident rates and better safety.

A potential concern we have heard in similar cases, where an insurance company offered a computer-based assessment or training program, is Privacy. How can users of InSight who are also Allstate policy holders know that whatever information the program gathers cannot be used against them, for example to deny coverage or increase premiums?
That's a great question. We are aware of that potential concern, and we are putting processes in place so that Allstate doesn't get access to any cognitive information on a particular individual. The Posit Science program is gathering the information, and Posit Science will only share data with us at an aggregated level, for overall research purposes. Allstate will be completely blind as to who uses the program.

Insurance company tests brain fitness software

• [Eric Carlson]

  You know that 80% of this training will be the intro… teaching old people how to use a mouse….

• [CJ]

  The skills involved are completely different, though. I’ve been riding a motorcycle for 12 years, but can’t play a riding or driving game on a screen to save my life.

• [AlvaroF]

  Good comments.

  Clif: the context here is even wider. On the one hand, given increased longevity and variability in quality of cognitive aging, it will soon stop making sense to maintain arbitrary and universal retirement age thresholds. On the other hand (and this is what happens with driving) if there are no established “retirement” age thresholds…how and when do people (say, a lawyer, or a driver) need to stop working (driving) because they are not cognitively qualified any longer? As a society, we will need to set up new expectations and processes.

  Now, what is potentially very promising about the Allstate- Posit Science initiative is not the testing component, but the training one. What if relatively inexpensive interventions help to maintain important driving capacities (and related quality of life and mental health)for 1- 2-3-4-5 more years? And if the same was possible in other occupations where cognitive demands can be broken down and then enhanced in a side-effect-free way?

  In terms of privacy, there are 2 separate companies involved here: Posit Science gathers data. Allstate doesn’t receive any data that allows to identify an individual. I will follow-up with them to ask what kind of safeguards are in place to prevent any kind of unintended information to be requested/ transferred.

  CJ: the point here is to train specific cognitive skills relevant to driving a car, to ensure transfer to real life.

  Tom: perhaps older drivers drive slower as a defensive response, precisely because it takes them longer to process information and react? what if training may help reduce the rate of decline of those cognitive abilities…thereby contributing to alleviate the problem you point out?

  Stoneleafmoon: good point. Two people with the same age may have very different cognitive abilities, so age by itself is not the only factor at play.

• [Tom Hale]

  I’m all for eyesight, hearing, and skills tests for drivers after they reach a certain age. But I’ve had much less problems from them than drivers that are in too much of a hurry, pulling out in front of me – knowing I won’t run my new vehicle into their beat up, uninsured 78 LTD.

  The biggest problem I’ve seen with elderly drivers is their tendency to drive several MPH slower than the speed limit. The dangers of drivers attempting to go around the running roadblock, especially at rush hour, causes more problems (like road rage) than the elderly’s physical/mental age related problems.

• [stoneleafmoon]

  Let’s not be so ageist. This quote is from the article cited:

  “Older drivers have higher rates of fatal crashes, based on miles driven, than any other group except young drivers, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The high death rate is due in large part to their frailty.”

  And what’s “old” anyway? Are we talking numbers or different abilities or what…age doesn’t figure into this in the ways that lots of age discriminators want us to think. I really hope people will look at their ideas about “old” and see that possibly, they could re-think them. In the same way that it’s not cool to discriminate against size or mental abilities, it’s not cool to be ageist.

• [markfrei]

  A related but tangential note. My Mom is an OT and gives the driving test to patients who recovers from strokes. While she hates taking away the licenses of older drivers, it’s the right thing to do when they cannot drive. Usually the result is that they eventually finagle their way back behind the wheel (usually outraged children rage hold hell and make enough of a stink that the Sec of State caves). But on more than one occasion one of these people that my Mom cut off, later ended up behind the wheel and caused an accident fatal to another party. Needless to say she’s glad she did the right thing – else the hospital would have been liable. But she also would have been happier if her call hadn’t been overturned since that resulted in a death.

• [sum.zero]

  i see this being used to ramp up premiums rather than to educate. i also see the results of these tests being bled into the individual’s insurance policy in order to, again, ramp up premiums or deny coverage.

• [sum.zero]

  sorry, that should read “…bled into the individual’s LIFE insurance policy…”

• [Clif Marsiglio]

  Personally, I believe tests like this are essential for at-risk populations that are statistically going to be in a rapid and predictable decline (even if a few buck the trend).

  Anyone in the cognitive sciences understand most elderly SHOULD NOT be driving…or if they are, with great limits. Does the risk of one person that has all his faculties in place getting his license taken away mitigate that of the 9 others that are one confusing situation from mowing over a row of pedestrians?

  (This isn’t to say there aren’t upcoming technologies that will prevent a lot of this, as well as cognitively enhance these folks…but I’m talking about right now…personally, I can drive drunk safer than a lot of older folks driving at night…and so can most in their 20s and 30s).

  As for testing, I don’t know if I’d trust Allstate. There is nothing but ethics to keep anyone from seeing individual results. I’ve been in situations where we’ve done tests that measure a lot of medical related ideas, but not falling close enough to be considered a legal medical document. The participants were told the records were to be confidential, but everything was intonated as being anonymous (big difference). I was nearly let go from my job when I wouldn’t turn over data that had personal identification and then decided that even I didn’t need this info and cleaned the database so that the next person in my position couldn’t get to it thinking I was gone. I’m not going to risk an ethical violation because even though I can’t be sued for it, I can lose licensure in a few areas.

  Still, I personally think testing is a good idea…it shouldn’t be looked at as retribution, it is protecting the driver as well as others (otherwise, restricted licenses for anyone over 39!!!)