Ageing bodies, driving and change: exploring older body–driver fit in the high-tech automobile Chapters

The integration of mechanical and digital technology (e.g., back-up cameras) into the automobile is changing the experience of driving. This chapter examines the “fit” between the ageing body with ‘low-tech’ auto-biographies and the technological vehicle. The chapter begins with an outline of how the dominant ‘human factors’ approach examines older-driver car interaction and identify the shortcomings of this approach. To address these limitations, the chapter adopts a critical, phenomenological, and embodied approach and ethnographic methods that reveal everyday descriptions of driving. This demonstrates a focus on corporeality provides the means to reveal how technology can change ‘inner’ driving experience at sensory, affective, and habitual levels, and inspire particular bodily and cognitive responses as part of the process of adaptability. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how attention to the ageing body can improve human factors research on older driver-car interaction and add to the current sociological discussions on everyday life.