I’ve put off telling this story for a week and it’s gotten even better. A neighbor had a pig roast and ma went to it. The place is a repair shop with old junk cars in back down a short drive. An older lady was about to go home. Another person asked if they could drive her home. Her answer was no I can do it myself. Now for the events.
She backed into a car. She went forward down the short road and into the junk cars area. She hit a junk car. She was originaly parke within 15 feet of the highway with no visual obstructions between.
I get the rest of this information a half week later.
She hit two more cars. One was in the bible study parking lot and I can’t remember if the second was there also. The insurance calls up the party host to ask if there were cars to claim on insurance. They hadn’t claimed, because the lady might lose her license. The junk car of course was never to be claimed.
In half a week this lady hit four cars. She has decided not to drive any longer. It’s a shame that she would still be driving had she not voluntarily stopped driving.
Well, at least within the next couple of weeks, you’ll be safe for the winter! All of your dangerous old people will be here, driving 20 mph in front of me, with their blinker on.
Thanks.
My grandfather’s licence was renewed year after year even after he was stone blind. He would have grandma tell him what was in the way and which way to move. He finally had a fender bender, and his licence was pulled. I lived in another state and had no idea, but, two of my uncles lived within a few miles and never saw fit to tell him he was too blind to drive!
Can I tell my old driver story again? When we lived in Seattle, we bought a car from a 96-year-old man whose kids had made him give up driving. He’d had one fender-bender (in his driveway).
Shortly after we bought the car, we saw his name in the paper. He had been struck and killed by a car as he was walking in his neighborhood. I’ve always hoped his kids didn’t feel guilty about making him give up his car.
I find the fact that she drove into the junk yard the most interesting parts. The highway was always in view and the junk yard is in the oposite direction away from it.
Oh man! As a reporter I see so many incidents of elderly people crashing, quite often because they hit the gas instead of the brake and then panic. I’m in favor of mandatory yearly retesting after the age of 70, but I can see how that would upset a lot of elderly people. Driving is a sign of independence, and no one wants to lose that.
One thing I always admired about my grandfather - he knew when he needed to quit driving. First he stopped driving after dark because it was too hard for him to see. Then he quit altogether and sold his car. By that time, he was living with my mom and dad, where he stayed till he died.
I hope I’m that smart when I get that old. I know giving up the independence will be hard, but not as hard as knowing I’d hurt or killed someone. Remind me of this in another 30 years…
All your old people are ALREADY here, driving 23 mph and pulling out in front of me after waiting a good 15 seconds to make sure I’ll keep going in their direction and be inconvenienced when I slam on the brakes and redecorate the steering wheel with an impression of my nose and shards of what used to be my sunglasses.
That’s got to be one of the saddest things I’ve read in a long time, gabriela.
She must have had little family to help, that’s even sadder. When my grandmother gave up driving she at least had lots of relatives who were willing to take her anywhere, at just about any time. Grandma was, and still is(at 101) the most loved person in our family.
Sadly, as the percentage of American elders continues to grow, more of them are on the highways, and many should have hung up their spurs. My 85 yo father is one of them. The last trip I took with him was my last, as I refuse to ride with the man again while he is an operator. The PA State Police will not intervene, even though I’m his son. Only if a MD contacts the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, or if an accident occurs, will action be taken. In some instances, that’s too late.
While I respect that elders don’t wish to relinquish their independence, the figures are staggering. According to a 2000 NHTSA estimate, highway crashes cost U.S. society about $230.6 billion a year, with each roadway fatality costing an average of $977,000, and each critical injury crash costing an average of $1.1 million.
She’s five years old, and has been seriously injured twice by elderly drivers. In 2003, a 70 year-old had a seizure behind the wheel, and his car crashed, on fire, into a childcare centre. Sophie was trapped under the burning car, and suffered terrible burns. In May this year, she was being pushed across a pedestrian crossing in her wheelchair, when she was thrown 18 metres when a car driven by an 80 year-old man failed to stop at the crossing. She suffered multiple fractures, bruising, and internal injuries.
She captured the nation after the first accident. There was total disbelief after the second one.
Just as an aside, one thing that always irritates me is that the elderly are in part reported as being “more involved in fatal accidents” because they’re killed as pedestrians so often and that number is usually included in “involvement in fatal accidents” statistics. They also are just frail and more likely to die in accidents. But per capita, licensing an old driver is far safer than licensing a young one.
I think it depends on how you define “old.” I know I see police reports of elderly people (almost always older than 70) crashing into buildings, causing traffic tie-ups, running into pedestrians etc. that I just never see involving younger people. (Not counting drunk drivers, who tend to be younger than 60. I think they must not survive or keep their licenses past that.)
My guess is that if we were to graph ages versus incidents we’d see a high peak from age 16 to the late 20s, then a levelling off for the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, and then a rise again after that.
The difference between elderly drivers and careless teenagers is that teens can learn from their mistakes and get better. That’s why the graph would go downward. But elderly people will just keep losing mental and visual acuity. They will never get better at driving, only worse.
Well, as a rule accidents bottom out not in the 30s, but in the 50s and 60s. Even a 35 year old who’s been driving for two decades is dangerous when you compare them to a 60 year old. And yes, after 75 accidents rise, but they only start to look like a 20 year old again when you’re talking about somebody really ancient - in their late 80s or older. And that’s on a mile-by-mile basis. On a per capita basis even very old people aren’t that dangerous to license because they drive basically to the grocery and doctors appointments, they’re not spending an hour and a half in rush hour traffic every day or cruising around drunk on the weekends. So would I test people over 80? Maybe. But I’m not sure you’d save a lot of lives, and I wouldn’t be in a hurry to take away Grandpa’s ability to drive to the doctor, because that means putting him in a home most likely, and frankly as a society we don’t have a lot of excess resources to spend on that.
I am 63. I would like to see driver testing done every two years starting with your first Social Security check. That’s early enough that folks shouldn’t get their feelings too hurt and they will get used to the idea of being tested.
It is horrible to give up that independence – especially when there is no one to take over for you. I would like to see more shuttles available around neighborhoods for the elderly. Take them to the grocery, the mall, the library. Some route like that. Even if it were just a couple of days a week.
Before long we’ll have Boomer Buses. You heard it here first.
I think that drivers should have to take 10 to 20 hours of in car lessons with a provincially qualified driving instructor before being allowed to do a road test for their driver’s license, and that everyone should be road tested again every five years until they are 70, then they should be road tested every year after that, and the license automatically pulled for a specific list of conditions that doctors are required to report, just like they are required to report sexually transmitted diseases. Traffic accidents are no freaking joke, and they can be vastly reduced, but nobody cares about taking the steps to do that. It boggles my mind that we are so incredibly cavalier about the amounts of permanent injuries, deaths, and financial hardships caused by vehicle accidents. If it were a virus maiming and killing people every year like vehicle accidents we would be demanding changes to keep up safe from the killer virus.