There are companies out there, like this one, that deliver professionally-administered assessments of elderly drivers.
Assuming an elderly driver receives a “you’re OK to continue driving” rating, would that be expected to provide any kind of shielding from criminal/civil legal repercussions in the event of a future crash that was clearly caused by the elderly driver’s ineptitude (like mowing down pedestrians in an open-air market, or smashing up a dozen cars in a parking lot because you keep stomping on the gas instead of the brake)?
I’m thinking here of any kind of legal action that asserts “you should have known you were a dangerous driver,” with the driver now having a rebuttal of “hey, I had these professional assessors check me out, and they said I was OK, so I had good reason to think I was OK behind the wheel.”
IANAL, but I would think he most getting an assessment would do would be to be a factor in assessing the punitive damage at a lesser rate. But it’s arguable that just getting such an assessment may indicate some knowledge on your part that your driving skill had started to slip.
Why would such an assessment offer any shield? Your driver’s license doesn’t. If you tested and passed a license exam today (thereby proving some minimal competency) and kill someone tomorrow, you’re still hosed.
It seems like a nice way for kids to spend money giving a gift that is not actually a gift at all.
It also seems like a very nice way to fleece money from those family situations.
Its like the failed used car salesman “Dr” in those shoddy “sell you insurance without telling you” Medicare commercials:
Some guy with red hair, scrubs, a stethoscope and a beard yelling at grandma and the camera.
“You MUST call Now! This is the Number! You MUST call Now!”
So, you manage to prove that you didn’t mow down all those people in the market on accident. I don’t think that they’re going to go light on you on account of it being deliberate.
I think all those tests prove is that you’re capable of driving competently. It doesn’t prove that you do so.
For example, suppose I took the test and passed it with a top mark. Then a few months later, I got a ticket for driving twenty miles over the speed limit. I doubt a judge would listen to my argument that I didn’t violate the speed limit during my driver assessment so that proves I don’t speed.
I don’t think the program is designed to “certify” older drivers, as you believe. Instead, the program appears to be designed to help older drivers accept that they can no longer drive, and to help them transition into a life without driving. Here is the home page of the “Keeping Us Safe” program, which certifies the “Beyond Driving With Dignity ‘professionals.’” According to the brochure on how to become a “certified” professional assessor, the assessors are not even trained to assess driving abilities:
I would add that, at most, they’re evidence that you can drive competently for a limited period of time when you know that you’re being tested for competence.
We could say pretty much the same about the driving tests that teenagers take. I know, for a fact, that passing my driving test as a teenager was not an indication of true competence behind the wheel. I’m still surprised that i made it through the first couple of years of driving on the roads without killing myself or someone else.
I actually had to take another driving test about eight years ago. When we moved to California, i needed a license, but i had never held a US license. I only had my Australian license. Under these circumstances, you can’t just take the written test; you have to sit another driving test. I was a vastly better driver in my 30s than i was in my teens—more attentive, more thoughtful, more defensive, more anticipating of what might happen on the road—and yet my scores on the driving test were probably no better than they had been 20 years prior.