Older drivers appear to have, proportionally, a great deal more trouble with driving. The Dateline show featured a number of older drivers who consented to Dateline’s installation of small cameras in their cars. The Dateline crew reviewed the films on the air, and with the drivers; it was scary how many times these drivers simply didn’t see other traffic when they needed to.
The AARP is one of the most influential lobbying organizations around. Dateline interviewed several state legislators who said, in essence, that they had tried to introduce mandatory road and vision tests yearly for older drivers, only to have AARP aim its mighty lobbying guns at the issue.
So… submitted for your consideration: the AARP is a force for evil, and grandpa, get off the road.
The problem with reports from Dateline, 20/20 and 48 hours type shows is the subjectivity. Alarmist topics on the news shows garner viewers, the more viewers the more advertising dollars flowing in.
This type of production sets out to produce a segment and focuses only on any and all arguments supporting the shows view points. You receive only one side of the story and that side an amplification of situations and causes to support the shows viewpoints. These shows have been proven wrong and even caught manipulating the situations to support their reports by “providing actual video footage of the situation.”
I am not an old coot, geezer or a blue hair, I am not a grandfater, I am a father with a heck of a long time to go before I am old enough to retire. I too have seen older people driving that probably should not be driving, we all have. I play golf with a young man of 87, I go fishing with another old coot that is 91, the patriarch of our hunting camp is 84. I would and do ride with all of these guys frequently, I even doze. Old age doesn’t always mean incapable, ready for the drooling parade in a nursing home.
Dateline would not have achieved much of an audience dedicating a show to say some of the old people should not be driving.
I do not believe age is the main contributor to people lack of driving ability. I’m not old, and haven’t been driving for very long (only 7 years), but I’ve seen bad drivers from all age groups. I’ve driven in both New York and Colorado, so it’s not limited to one are. And I lived in Florida, so I’ve seen my share of elderly drivers.
I consider myself to be a good driver. I’ve never had a speeding ticket, or any moving violation. I would be in favor of mandatory driving tests, both written and road tests, along with vision checks, every 5 years. The time frame could be altered based on age, maybe every 3 years once you reach 75 years of age. For people who fail once, they must take a retest, within a week. After the second fail, or if the week period has past, make driving school mandatory. Make it fair for everyone. If older drivers need to retest periodically, everyone should, because anyone can be a bad driver, regardless of age.
Teenage drivers. I know, I was one at one time, and I raised 2.5 of them (one is now 15 1/2 ). The lack of experience plus the wild oats and feeling of invinciblitiy makes for bad driving. A 17 year old with a radar detector is someone you don’t want to be within miles of.
New drivers. Regardless of age, lack of experience is a dangerous thing, even if you’ve taken a good drivers ed course, nothing is as good as a few years behind the wheel.
Older drivers. Some of you are ging to argue this because it sounds like a bigoted statement against our senior citizens.
Tough! You’re wrong. Older people have slower thought processes, so it takes a bit longer for them to make decisions. Sometimes too long, which results in bad driving manuvers. Older folks have worse eyesight. If you are over 55 get your eyes tested every year. If over 65, every 6 months. And if the prescription has changed, get new glasses, beezle neck!! I don’t know how many seniors I’ve seen scrunched up to the windshield, squinting, while driving! You are not young any more. Take the bus.
Turning the commentary back to the OP: the AARP is a force for evil (an obviously tongue-in-cheek statement). The serious item for debate is: the AARP, in advancing the short-term interests of its members, is actually doing long-term harm to society’s interests, and, indeed, the interests of its own members.
Regardless of the slant of Dateline, it’s beyond cavil that (a) the AARP has consistently, and successfully, opposed legislation that would mandate frequent eyesight and/or road tests for senior citizens; (b) the incidence of failing eyesight and failing reflexes is directly proportional to how elderly one is.
I’ll add that while there’s nothing unusual about unions and special interest groups lobbying congress for their own interests, and while there is nothing unusual about those interests being contrary to those of society (tobacco, auto safety, and pharmaceuticals come to mind first), it is unusual to have an unwritten rule that a powerful lobbying organization is off-limits for public criticism. The AARP enjoys this type of immunity to a certain extent, however, because we are all reluctant to “attack” or “take advantage of” old people on any grounds whatsoever.
This is certainly a sweet human sentiment, and I think it has its place in our social structure, but the AARP sometimes takes advantage of it. Of course there should be frequent tests of driving ability before a person is granted permission to point a 4,000 pound projectile at you and hit the gas.
I think the answer may lie in reforming driver testing standards across the board, without specific attention to age. Vision, hearing, basic knowledge of laws and, in my opinion, reflex and reaction time should be tested annually before people of any age are granted the privilege (not right) to drive. Sure, it would be a pain in the ass, but still worth it IMHO.
I agree with the posts above regarding the AARP and the need for vision and hearing checks after the age 65-75 or so.
However, I have seen the effect on a person of having a license rescinded due to age: its horrible. This woman’s (a single woman, age 80, lived alone, etc) car was her ONLY means of transportation in a huge city that was getting bigger by the minute. She had no children, family that was as old as she was and when they took her car away from her, it just killed her. I honestly think the forced isolation contributed to her decline (senile dementia etc). I used to visit her in the nursing home and every time I went, she always mentioned that “they took my car away from me.”
Just to expand on the previous post by bunnygirl. I don’t think there is much doubt that older drivers are, on average, far greater risks than others. But considering the consequences of depriving them of their driving priviledges, the price of letting them drive may be worth paying.
Considering that you are a skilled driver, Cannon, would you object to taking a driving test every few years after reaching a certain age? Does that really strike you as an unreasonable proposition?
Oh yeah? You tell that to the parents of the kid an old man ran over when he drove over the curb & onto the sidewalk. “oh, your daughter is dead, but it’s a price worth paying so grandpop can have a little independance.”
It bugs the hell out of me how some people think driving is a “right”. It’s not! We are not taking driving seriously enough. We’re talking about something that kills almost 50K a year. Any other item or activity that kills that many and there are screams to ban it(guns, tobacco,etc) When a large group of citizens…teens, elderly, alcoholics,etc…has shown over the years to have less than perfect driving habits/skills, we need to set restrictions. I’m on the road quite a bit (35,000 miles a year) and my observations are, many elderly drivers are accidents waiting to happen.
Cannon - We’re not proposing to take away lisences form older folks who are safe drivers, we are only proposing that we test older folks, and maybe all folks, to make sure that they stay safe. BTW - My grandpa never had an accident, but he CAUSED many by driving really slow regardless of where he was driving (I witnessed many of these while white knuckling in the back seat.). Finally, he got so many tickets for driving below the minimum speed on the highway that he lost his lisence. Whew, you should have heard him grump about that one.
Personally, I’d like to see drivers tests get much harder and also be given every 5 years. I’d like to take the drivers lisences away from about 75% of the drivers out there and increase public transportaion. Reduce roads, reduce polution, increase jobs (bus drivers, taxi drivers, etc.), and generally make the world a better place. I haven’t thought this through very well, so feel free to tear down my fantasy.
Assuming that my post (which preceded yours) was the one that you took offence at, I would just mention that I did not wish to impugn the driving ability of all elderly drivers, and certainly not yours. I am speaking of averages.
Pkbites,
By your logic, no one should be able to drive. There’d be a lot fewer accidents that way. Oh, but society can’t function without cars? Tell that to the parents of the kid etc.
Obviously there is a price that we are willing to pay, including some loss of life, for our current methods of transportation. I don’t think older people should be summarily excluded from this calculation.
Truly. Just like owning a gun and voting. Building bridges, etc.
I think it is preposterous that we only need to take a driving test once in our lives…when we’re sixteen for most of us! Yeah, like I remember half the shit I was taught at sixteen. I’m suprised I remember my biology teacher’s name!
Or was the 15?
Anyway, I would be all for testing evey five years or so…like, written test with vision check every five, and a full-on driving road test (complete with maneuverablity or parrallel parking!) all over again once a decade. Every tenth birthday, every multiple of five in age.
We’ll just cut welfare to come up with the cash. Well, everything but the previous statement was completely serious. I’m a pretty good driver and obey just about every damn law out there. Especially now that I’ve moved to the Boston area…those damn traffic circles! An Escher solution to four-way stops. ha.
I say test us all. Driving can be so damn dangerous. Funny how the solution has always been to keep driver from dying in car wrecks instead of stopping them from getting into wrecks in the first place. Yet again, business takes the fall for the consumer. sigh
Its a tough world I live in
Well then what about raising the driving age to 18? The benefits to that are pretty easy to see. Between the ages of 16 and 18, kids drive like maniacs (no, not you, I mean other kids). So don’t let them drive! That will lower the accident rate, and in turn lower insurance rates and probably have a lot of other benefits that I’m too lazy to check on right now.
Unfortunately, seniors behind the wheel aren’t the only cause of driving grandpa accidents. There’s also road rage.
I know, that’s a difficult statement to defend: road rage isn’t the fault of the person being raged at, it’s the fault of the one doing the raging. I know. I don’t blame grandpa when some idiot stuck behind him for 30 miles at 30mph decides to barrel past him on a hill and gets into an accident. I blame the idiot. But there is some cause-and-effect there.
Again, I’m not using that as a reason to get elderly drivers off the road. Or even tested. But something we cannot deny is that road rage kills people. And older drivers are the cause of road rage in many (but not all) cases.
But that notwithstanding, testing drivers every five years–ALL drivers–is a brilliant idea. My mother is sixty, and as long as I can remember, she’s been a lousy driver (I’d never tell her that, mind you). If she were tested regularly, she would get professional feedback about her driving skills and would be able to make whatever adjustments were necessary to improve them. I imagine others would too.
Since I spend a fair amount of time on the road myself and see poor drivers of all ages, I would agree that making everyone re-test periodically would be a good idea. Why not do it when your driver’s license is up for renewal? Once every 4-5 years should not be a big deal, and make an end-run around the AARP decrying re-testing as age-discriminatory.
BTW, I do think in this instance the AARP is not performing a public service by lobbying against re-testing. There are SOME older folks (Cannon, please note the qualifier) who are hazardous drivers because of physical infirmities that diminish their ability to drive, and having an impersonal mechanism for getting them off the road is important. Family members who know an elderly driver in the family shouldn’t be getting behind the wheel anymore generally run into tremendous resistance from the driver, who does not want to admit their infirmity or dreads the subsequent lack of mobility. Having one’s license based on re-testing takes the burden of imposing restrictions out of the family’s hands and saves some internal strife.
IMHO AARP should be lobbying for more “senior transportation” programs to resolve the mobility issue, which would probably be of greater benefit to the senior community at large anyway. How many elderly women never learned to drive in the first place, and once they’re widowed lose their mobility because they’ve lost their “chauffeur”? What’s AARP doing to help these folks out?
BTW, my personal opinion re drivers weaving in and out of traffic well above the speed limit: first offense suspends your license for six months, second offense for a year, third offense revokes it permanently. Anyone caught driving when they shouldn’t automatically loses all privileges. Don’t care what age you are, or that you need to drive to school, work etc. - you should have thought of that earlier.
