Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's • Hacker News Board

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#41

Post by id » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:33 PM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #34

cortic wrote: post #30

Taxi Drivers: The mean age at death is approximately 67.8 years. General Population: in the same dataset, life expectancy averaged 74 years. The average age at which patients are typically diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease is 79. People in these jobs don't live long enough on average to get diagnosed, at the same rate. The same effect will happen in any job that lowers your life expectancy.

That's very interesting but why do taxi drivers have a job that lowers life expectancy? Is it because they're sitting too much? Or because they're inhaling CO from cars too much? Or staying inside (the car) too much? Or is it just stressful? For from the look of it it doesn't look like an exceptionally hard job (btw a brother of mine did years of "VTC": "Vehicule de Tourisme avec Chauffeur" , basically high-end taxis…

Because it doesn't pay very well. Being affluent increases life expectancy.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#42

Post by id » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:35 PM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #15

My grandfather was a taxi driver and delivery driver for many years. He made it to 93 and I don't recall him dealing with any cognitive decline. He used to tell me different routes to get to a stadium that was closed before I was even born.

n=1

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#43

Post by stackskipton » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:38 PM UTC

glitchc wrote: post #40

cortic wrote: post #30

Taxi Drivers: The mean age at death is approximately 67.8 years. General Population: in the same dataset, life expectancy averaged 74 years. The average age at which patients are typically diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease is 79. People in these jobs don't live long enough on average to get diagnosed, at the same rate. The same effect will happen in any job that lowers your life expectancy.

They are likely studying individuals that retired without getting fatally stabbed or shot on the job.

It's not violence from the job but their job was generally bad for their health in other ways. Sitting all day without getting up and driving around with windows down getting all this UV.

Also, older ones were exposed to a ton of cigarette smoke.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#44

Post by detourdog » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

jmcgough wrote: post #19

bpodgursky wrote: post #16

Guys... Alzheimer's is 60-80% heritable, and driven largely by APOE genotype. No, you cannot get out of it with One Quick Trick. We have to find therapeutics to make real progress here. This kind of misdirection is not helpful to the research community, or encouraging politicians to fund effective projects. Everyone WANTS a quick lifestyle change and will latch onto these things, but this is a real biological disease…

Half of people with Alzheimer's carry at least one APOE ε4 allele. However , a full quarter of the population carries that mutation, and most carriers never go on to develop Alzheimer's. Lifestyle matters a lot here. This kind of misdirection is not helpful for educating people on changes they can make now to reduce their risk, rather than waiting for a silver bullet. Alzheimer's research is well-funded in the US as…

My understanding is that there are forms of dementia more tied to genetics than "Alzheimer's". One that has links to genetics is Frontal temporal Dementia.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#45

Post by fitsumbelay » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:48 PM UTC

First rule of attentioneering - If it bleeds, it ledes

Second rule - Got edge case? Got headline!

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#46

Post by minraws » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:50 PM UTC

stackskipton wrote: post #43

glitchc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are likely studying individuals that retired without getting fatally stabbed or shot on the job.

It's not violence from the job but their job was generally bad for their health in other ways. Sitting all day without getting up and driving around with windows down getting all this UV. Also, older ones were exposed to a ton of cigarette smoke.

Also road accidents.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#47

Post by genxy » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:50 PM UTC

walthamstow wrote: post #12

> In one landmark 2000 study, neuroscientists compared the brains of licensed London taxi drivers with those of people who did not drive cabs. Location is very important here. London cabbies have to pass The Knowledge which is an extremely difficult memory exam that only people with particular kind of brain can do.

People who would pass The Knowledge test might already develop dementia at a much lower rate.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#48

Post by jrflo » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:52 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #37

cortic wrote: post #30

Taxi Drivers: The mean age at death is approximately 67.8 years. General Population: in the same dataset, life expectancy averaged 74 years. The average age at which patients are typically diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease is 79. People in these jobs don't live long enough on average to get diagnosed, at the same rate. The same effect will happen in any job that lowers your life expectancy.

As the paper points out that's accounted for in the analysis, because shockingly enough to most internet commentators researchers know that they need to control for confounding variables https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194

Always insane to me how people will just read the headline of an article and point out "flaws" based on what they assume the article says

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#49

Post by david-gpu » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

cobertos wrote: post #22

chuckadams wrote: post #4

The ones that do stopped being taxi drivers.

True, though the article does also mention another study not based on taxi drivers, but just living in high spatial complexity ZIP codes puts you at a lower risk. > Research on cognitive maps points toward the same conclusion as the study on taxi drivers. In 2023, researchers ran a machine learning model on more than 22,500 people in a national dataset and were able to predict which ZIP codes had higher rates of Alzh…

A dense street network with complex intersections also means living in walkable urban cores vs car-centric suburbs.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#50

Post by al_borland » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #17

artisinal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Elsewhere in the world taxi drivers just follow the GPS.

We had taxis long before GPS. When I was in my early 20s I had a job delivering pizza. I very quickly learned the delivery area, I knew pretty much every street and alleyway and shortcut to get from one place to another. Much smaller than London but I think the human brain is very good at remembering routes and where things are in an area, as this would have been an evolutionary advantage (go out hunting and be able…

I suspect GPS has made this much worse. I shining example was an Uber I got in Chicago, where GPS doesn't work well due to all the buildings. The guy drove around the same block 3 times, blindly following the GPS. It was infuriating.