Reading Meters: Vision, Instrumentation and Evaluation in Voluntary Post-Licence Training for Older Drivers

Out-of-home mobility, i.e. the possibility for individuals to move and participate in activities outside their immediate home environment, contributes to the overall well-being of (older) members of society. Private car travel, as one means of mobility, enables seniors to continue leading active, autonomous lives but, at the same time, requires skills and abilities that they may be losing or lacking. The chapter provides a social-interactional perspective into mobility at an older age: it adopts a qualitative research approach, ethnomethodological conversation analysis, and draws on audio and video recordings of voluntary post-licence training to examine how older drivers may take up and deal with possibly age-related challenges as they drive in real traffic in real time. The chapter focuses on a two-minute fragment of such a journey and explores how a potential problem in the driving activity emerges; how it is used as a basis for instruction, on the one hand, and self-reflection, on the other; and, finally, how old age as a category is first evoked and then dismissed in interaction.