I would support restrictions only as part of a comprehensive program to ensure the competence to drive of all drivers, regardless of age.
many states implement graduated licensing for young drivers (no night driving, limit on passengers, etc), and have seen a reduction in fatal accidents involving teens. how is this different from placing restrictions on another dangerous group?
if anything, older drivers should be more regulated because teens are out crashing into trees, and old people are plowing through playgrounds.
I support frequent driving tests for everyone, on general principles (see all the threads that prove that most *other * drivers are idiots 
). This doesn’t solve every problem, though.
My father is 83 and could pass any driver’s test. But he drives like a maniac, especially on inter-city trips on freeways. And it’s gotten worse over time. I went with him in his little Prius (too small for me to drive it) on a 250-mile jaunt to see my aunt and uncle, and didn’t think I was going to survive. He cuts people off, zooms around across multiple lanes, all so he can go at the speed he wants to go at regardless of traffic. Then on the trip back, I couldn’t even take refuge in sleep because he said “I didn’t have my afternoon nap, so make sure I don’t fall asleep at the wheel.” :eek: He has the best radar detector money can buy so that he won’t get tickets. I think he’s trying to prove something about how he’s not really old, or else he is ::terminally:: impatient as he gets older. It’s a wonder he hasn’t killed himself or someone else. I could turn him in, but I don’t know how they’d ever catch him at it. I’m just glad I live in another state!
Yes, Dad, if you’re lurking here, I’m talking about you.
I should think a driving competancy test should be required every 2 years after 70, also required after every driving ticket no matter what the age of the driver. Failure would result in the driver being reduced to a learner status until they took the full driving license test again to regain their license.
The town I grew up in is 80% retirees, and we had one little old man who failed the visual part of the test once. He then sat in the DMV office for a few days straight, listening to the test being given until he had it memorized (they never vary the order of the signals). He took it again, passed, then promptly got into an accident. :rolleyes:
We do have mandatory testing every few years (4?) here in Oregon, but it’s just vision and hearing, no actual driving test.
Re-test of vision and reflexes should be a definite after a certain age. We can argue about what age that is. Based on test results, people should be allowed a full license, a restricted license (daytime only, or only on local roads, etc.) or none at all.
It’s correct, though, that in some locations if you can’t drive you are homebound and dependent on the kindness of relatives and strangers to get where you need to go.
IMHO many elderly men are especially touchy about this issue. It is just one more case of losing control over themselves, their lives and environment. Some people place more value in their own sense of self-worth than in the idea that they could do harm to others. During his last few years, my late father was a menace. Nothing we could do would convince him to quit driving, even the prospect that the pickup truck he didn’t see could just as easily have been a person. For what he was paying in auto insurance, he could have taken a taxi everywhere. We also tried addressing the issue with the local police, to no avail. They did not seem interested in developing a case that this person’s license should be revoked, since no one accident resulted in major damage.
OTOH, my MIL, who is 90, drives well enough for what she does – a mile up the local road in one direction to Kmart and the supermarket, a mile in the other direction to church and the drugstore.
It is a fact of life that as we age our motor skills, eyesight, memory, and reflexes deteriorate. So it seems perfectly sensible that those over 75 or 80 should have to take the test frequently, say every year. To those that say that you’re just singling out one group because of their age, I reply, so what? It’s not as if we don’t use age to give them certain benefits. And the idea of a yearly driver’s test makes it safer for everyone—starting with the elderly poor driver behind the wheel and including the crowd of people that just happen to be infront of that person’s car when he inadvertently hits the gas instead of the brakes.
Well, I personally think everybody should be given a visual acuity test, driving skill evaluation (similar to the driver test), AND a written test with essay questions and fill in the blanks. Perhaps once every 5 years.
Yes, absolutely I would.
My family is dealing with this problem right now with my grandfather. He’s 81, his eye-sight is poor, he can hardly hear, and he has epilepsy. He’s had quite a number of small strokes in the past few years, his seizures are more frequent, and he hasn’t driven in almost two years because he got in an accident and totalled his brand new truck. His reflects are shot, he frequently gets lost in his thoughts and becomes oblivious to the world around him. (Of course, that’s been the case his whole life-he’s always been the “absent minded professor” type). He’s slow and shaky when he walks. And quite frankly, even when he WAS in his best of health, he always drove like a damned maniac.
However, he’s fighting to get back out on the road. He has a used truck he bought sitting in his garage, never driven by him (he got my cousin to take him to get it, and according to my dad, it’s a piece of shit), and two of my aunts are still in denial that he’s no longer capable. My dad has tried talking to him, but my grandfather is EXTREMELY stubborn and beligerant, and Dad’s reluctant to get into it with him. My grandmother insists he’s perfectly capable (probably afraid we’re going to get HER license next, and honestly, she’s probably correct). My dad wants my grandmother to talk to his doctor, to tell him point blank, “You cannot drive anymore!” (The doctor kind of pussyfoots around it).
Thing is, his license is still good, as far as we know. sigh I am almost certain that if he gets behind the wheel, it’s only a matter of time or luck before he gets into an accident. If it were up to me, I’d tell him outright, but it’s not my place to say so.
We got lucky with my other grandmother-her car was in bad shape, she really didn’t have the money to get it fixed, or for a new car, so my mom and my aunt just tactfully suggested she turn in her keys, which she did. Lucky for Gramma, she has a lot of nieces and nephews and friends nearby who are more than happy to take her places (Mom and Auntie live forty-five minutes away, each, so it’s not always practical to drive her). Plus, my mother signed her up for a cab service where it’s only fifty-cents for a ride. (Though she refuses to use it.)
El Zagna, any way you could talk to his doctor?
As for necessities, perhaps if we worked to GET a public transportation system set up, even to areas that don’t have one? Because as it is, I don’t think that people have the right to outright ENDANGER themselves and others to get groceries. There has to be some kind of solution.
As a former truck driver and taxi driver and somebody who rides a motorcycle for days on end as a vacation I’ve spent a lot of time on the road.
I’m all for a five year renewal, full exam for everybody.
Good luck. If he’s that stubborn, whatcha wanna bet he won’t listen to the doctor either? That’s the experience we had when Dad got out of the hospital after one of his surgeries. “Aww, they don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m fine…”
Yeah, but couldn’t the doctor get his license suspended?
Nope. Not in that place and time, which wasn’t so long ago. At that point, he was expected to recover from the surgery and to consult with the doctor before resuming driving. He just didn’t do so.
We explored it with the local police, who as I said earlier, didn’t seem to be very interested. Apparently just having an increasing number of accidents that mostly damaged vehicles was not sufficient. Obviously my sister and I disagreed, but were unable to cause this to happen. We tried. I guess if he had finally run into a mother with a baby carriage they would have listened.
I meant if my grandfather’s doctor told him point blank, no, you are unable to drive.
Count me in as another person all for mandatory driving tests after a certain age. I don’t think it’s ageism to say you only need them after 70, or 65, or whenever, because it’s a fact that as you get older, your vision, hearing, and reflexes get worse. I guess we should allow five year olds to drive because by setting the limit at 16, that’s ageism, right?
That I don’t know for sure, if the MD said hr should never drive again. It would not suprise me if there was some legal rigamarole the doc would have to do in order to make this stick and to have his DL revoked. IMHO some doctors (like my father’s) are reluctant to go to the trouble of doing so.
My father became unable to drive about five years ago. A little before that, he gave me a ride to the mall and I was never so scared to be in a car in my life. Weaving all over the road, bad stops and starts… Afterwards, I said, “There is no way I am going in a car you are driving. I’ll pay for a cab first.”
My best friend and I disabled his car, with full knowledge of the family and his apartment superintendant. 
Eventually his doctor wrote to the Ministry of Transport and they pulled his license. We donated the car to charity. It was in good condition and all, and I thought about buying it, but there was no way I could afford it at the time.
All in all, it was heartbreaking. But better heartbreak than half a dozen dead pedestrians.
Guin,
Would not having a valid driver’s license stop your grandfather from driving? It didn’t stop my grandmother when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s (incorrectly) and had hers taken away by the state. Her sons were reluctant to take her car away completely because being able to drive is so connected to the ability to live independently, and so connected to the will to live. (Note: she lived in a retirement community with ample transportation to grocery stores, doctors and the like. She just didn’t like taking the bus with all those “old people”. ) I suspect that the son who lived nearest was in denial of how much and how far she drove the car–and then it developed problems which required lengthy stays away from her home. As of today, she no longer has access to the car, but thinks that giving it up was a mistake and maintains that she is perfectly capable of driving. (She has been placed in assisted living for her own good.)
Fine, if we’re going by stats, then women should be exempt. A woman over 75 is far safer to license than a man at any age.From here.
Eureka, I would hope so. For starters, it would also mean selling his truck. And my grandmother has never let him drive her car, because he’s a maniac on the road-even in his prime.
Should we just throw up our hands and say, “Oh well, he’d still try to drive even without his license, so why bother?”