Well, it wouldn't have been intended as "a serious attempt at addressing the subject" any more than any of the other "reality" shows are. They don't set out to be documentaries, they are a cheap way of making entertainment programmes to hold audiences.

It would be interesting to see a serious study into these kind of questions, which would try to disentangle statistical affects that might be related to the different way people use their cars (I suspect a higher proportion of the journeys made by older people are for short distances), and to the fact that older people are likely to be more vulnerable than younger people in an identical accident.