In 1999, The Hartford became a founding sponsor of the MIT AgeLab, creating the Safe Driving for a Lifetime partnership.

Dr. Joseph Coughlin of MIT and the Corporate Gerontology Group at The Hartford are committed to producing original research that can expand the understanding of older drivers and their families as they deal with changes in driving abilities.

Through professional meetings and public education, The Hartford/MIT AgeLab partnership has successfully reached millions of people in the United States and across the globe with high-quality, meaningful information to guide important decisions about safe driving.

About the Study

In Spring 2002, The Hartford/MIT AgeLab partnership sent written questionnaires to a sample of:

• 7,200 home-dwelling adults.
• Age 50 and older.
• Living in the United States.

The sample was stratified by age and was selected from a pool of participants in an ongoing consumer marketing panel about whom we had preliminary demographic information.

For the purposes of this study, drivers were considered to be people who were:

• Licensed to drive.
• Had driven an automobile at least once in the previous 12 months.

Response Rate
Participants were offered a $1 incentive to complete the questionnaire. Of the total questionnaires sent, 3,823 were returned, for a 53% response rate.

To correct for some of the differences between the sample and the population as a whole, the data are weighted to 2001 Current Population Study quotas on:

• Gender.
• Age.
• Region.
• Household designation.
• Household size.

More precisely, the sample is representative of adult drivers aged 50 and older who live in households headed by someone 50 or older. Results reported in the survey are based on the weighted data.