My question stems from the fact that I often find my self very frustrated due to unneeded delays in traffic, which in my situations always end up being an elderly person. My grandparents are late 70’s and they all still drive, but I am not sure that I would ever ride with them.
Should there be mandatory driving tests after age 60,70, etc? Has our world changed so much that a person who started driving back in 40’s or 50’s can’t or might not be able to safely drive today?
P.S. In no way am I saying that only old people are bad drivers, but I am wondering is there problems that old age produces that might diminish from someone’s ability to drive safely?
It seems the jury is still a bit out on this one. Certainly with age comes some diminished capacity including vision and reflex times. However, also with age comes experience and perhaps greater caution (less risk taking).
Among other things your reflex times increase (it takes you longer to react to a quickly developing situation) and your vision worsens. For vision everyone has a natural blind spot (you can see the effect demonstrated here ). As you age more of your vision becomes obscured. Your brain ‘fills-in’ the missing information so it is not noticeable. Unfortunately an older driver may now miss a car and pull into traffic (I’ve seen this fairly often where an older driver starts to make a turn then quickly hits the brakes as a car they seemingly didn’t notice goes whizzing past).
This link on Vision and Driving has a very detailed analysis of vision and age and notes the following:
This bit says that bad driving by older drivers is in question at least in the UK. It also notes a little later on that, “A greater proportion of older drivers undoubtedly had poorer vision, although this does not necessarily justify the assumption that visual defects were the causative factors in their accidents.”
I’m pretty sure they have mandatory driving tests in Australia (I seem to recall my mum saying that my grandfather has to go to something every year…he’s in his late 80’s)
And I know that they do here in Japan too.
Its a good idea. Reflexes deteriorate over time, but a lot of people tend to deny that, unless an unbiased test proves otherwise.
I think there should be mandatory tests after a certain age. My grandmother couldn’t drive worth a lick after she turned 65 due to the beginnings of alzhiemers (sp?) disease.
Your proposal would be a lot easier for older folks to support if it was changed slightly to have everyone re-tested every specific-number-of-years. That way you’re not singling out a particular section of society and you’re handling other (admittedly not so frequent) situations such as folks whose judgement might be starting to fail for other reasons. All of those drugs I took back in the sixties finally beginning to kick in, for example…
The problem with that is it is costly. You’d have to add extra testing facilities and other infrastructure to pull that off and that money has to come from somewhere. IIRC I was tested more frequently as a teen driver than I am now so it isn’t necessarily only the elderly who are being singled out…it is defined risk factors.
As I mentioned before older drivers seem to be a mixed bag. Check out this link to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (it’s a PDF file) for a pretty good overview of older population driving statistics. Older people are the least likely to be under the influence of alcohol of any age group. On the flip-side when estimated annual travle is taken into account the elderly (70+) are 9 times more likely to be killed driving as 25-69 year olds (teen drivers are right up there with the elderly in this stat).
They should not be allowed to drive AT ALL after age 60. Let them ride public transportation for free, but get them the hell off the roads. Over 60 drivers are a public nuisance.
I think mandatory testing for EVERYONE is ridiculous. Like mentioned, it would be way too costly. If there are cold, hard facts that with age comes decreased awareness and reflex then there should be more stringent testing. But testing everyone so as not to single someone out a particular group (in this case over 60) doesn’t make sense.
Older drivers probably have a better driving records than younger drivers. Not talking about drivers that are senile. Just remember if we are lucky we will be this age someday.
According to Whack-A-Mole’s cite (assuming I read the graph correctly, the safest group of drivers (per capita) is the 65-69 age group, followed by the 55-64 group, then the 70+ group.
70+ drivers are more likely to die in an accident (as passengers, pedestrians, etc.), and they also do cause more problems if you base it on miles driven (they don’t drive a lot of miles), but from a “what’s the most dangerous group per capita” view, they are one of the safer groups of drivers on the road.
Maybe the rest of us should get tested instead of them.
Yeah - they’re the safest group because they’re going to slow to do any damage…to THEMSELVES. But they sit there weaving along 20 miles below the speed limit in their huge gas guzzling tanks, creating problems for other drivers, who get into horrible accidents trying to get the hell around / away from them.
(shrug) Testing everyone the first time (before you get your license) is costly, but we seem to think that the benefits are worth it. If you think that bad drivers are the cause of a lot of accidents (and I do), then periodic re-testing makes economic sense.
As an alternate scheme, how about mandatory re-testing after a certain number of traffic citations? Or after a certain number of traffic citations over a specified amount of time?
Yet another alternative approach to getting rid of bad drivers:
What say we go for mandatory loss of licenses for a specified amount of time if some limit to the number of traffic citations over a specified amount of time is exceeded? Say, two reckless driving citations within two years results in mandatory loss of license for the next two years, with driving privileges resmued only after passing another driving test?
(Actually, I dimly remember something like that being the case in New Jersey back when I started driving there in the sixties. I seem to recall that every moving violation was worth a specific number of points, and twelve points within three years caused loss of license. When I was 18 there was a twelve month period when I drove very carefully because another speeding violation would have put me over that limit.)
I agree that all drivers should be periodically retested. There is absolutely no reason that a driver’s license should be a lifetime license with a cursory renewal process every few years. The ever-increasing volume of cars on the road, the changes in vehicle types that a driver is likely to encounter over the years, the potential diminishment of skills and reflexes with age, and other factors all are good arguments in favor of retesting.
I’ll bet a lot of people think they could easily pass their driving test again if asked tomorrow, and I bet a lot of them are wrong. Including me, for all I know.
You must be joking! A driving test is unbelievably easy!
For a long time through college and a little while after I didn’t have a car and let my license expire. I had no clue when I went to renew it that if enough time passes you must be retested (both written and driving). Since I was caught out on the spot I sat for the written test and got 100%. For the driving test the only mark against me was the tester telling me at the end to just “pull-up over there.” There were some incredibly faded parking lines on the pavement but at that point I thought the test was over and didn’t pay attention to that bit (we were in a large parking lot and there were no other cars nearby at the testing facility). It turned out I pulled the car up just a little over one of the parking lines and the tester marked me down for it. I protested but he told me to shut-up since I had passed the test anyway with only that mark against me. I was still a bit miffed but I wisely kept my mouth shut.
Personally I think driving test should be FAR harder than they are.
Road tests assess the skills of drivers. Skills can be memorized, and become almost instinct. What the problem is with elderly drivers is mental competence. Is a driver going to sit in an intersection for an hour, waiting for a large enough break in traffic to turn left, because they can no longer judge the speed and distance of the other cars? Are they going to crash into someone while changing lanes because they misjudged their position? Regular vision and road tests are essential to keeping dangerous people off the road (old AND young).
And not to sound like a giand advertisement, but there is a program available that helps to screen out dangerous drivers, without taking many of them on the road. The website is linked below (since I can’t be bothered to remember the proper coding) for DriveABLE testing, a Canadian company that has developed a program that is being licensed to DMVs to aid in assessing driving ability in the elderly. Something along these lines should help keep the roads flowing.
Now if they only had something like that for younger idiot drivers, the world would be a much happier place.
I think that there should be some kind of reaction time testing whenever your license is renewed. It could be as simple as looking into a box like the one we have for the vision testing and pressing a button when you see a flash of light. Or it could be more elaborate involving expensive simulators and such. That would weed people out when their reaction time starts to deteriorate at whatever age.
I also agree with pldennison that a lot of people who think they’re perfectly good drivers would fail a drive test years later. So much of driving (or any oft repeated task) becomes unconscious that I don’t think you could necessarily clean up all your bad habits for the test. Suppose that you habitually drive about 5 over the speed limit. When I took my test, speeding by even a couple miles per hour would automatically fail you. I think the chances are decent that during the test your speed would accidentally creep up to your accustomed speed just because sometimes you have to watch the road and not the speedometer.
