The per mile statistic covers this, trust me. For every mile that people over 75 who drive DO drive, they’re about as good as people in their 20s on average. The existence of totally non-driving seniors doesn’t matter one way or another. So even if we look purely at competence on the road, they’re just not that bad.
I do understand your point, that looking at the crash rate per licenseee, makes drivers look more skilled if more of them drive infrequently or not at all. But if you think about it carefully I think you’ll realize that the important issue really is not defining who has the better driving skills. The issue that should really concern us in a safety analysis is who’s relatively safe to *license * and who’s dangerous to license. There’s really no point in pursuing and revoking the license of every bad driver out there just as a matter of principle. They’re dangerous if they’re bad drivers and they’re on the road - and specifically if they’re on the road a lot. If a person is not driving *at all * it clearly is a moot issue whether we revoke their license or not. They’re inherently safe to license. If they’re driving rarely and only when absolutely necessary, then it doesn’t matter if they’re doing that for safety reasons (as I suggested earlier) or just because they don’t like to drive - the upshot is their driving habits compensate for their skills. They’re unlikely to get in an accident even if they’re a realtively poor driver.
Now you may want to pursue the fact that there are some poor older drivers who are licensed who shouldn’t be based on their skills, but my opinion is that a cost/benefit analysis speaks against severe measures in that pursuit. What’s going to happen is that in your quest to revoke licenses of incompetent drivers you’re going to sweep in a large number of seniors who are statistically harmless, and many will lose their independence entirely and suddenly be either requiring support of the state or require assisted living. This is a very very expensive proposition and the reward is you won’t save many lives. You have to remember that licensing driving for every age group is a cost/benefit analysis. Every age group is a quantifiable threat to license, but we license them anyway because we recognize that there are compensatory benefits.
I agree and I’ve said I’m absolutely in favor of more conservative measures for making sure that the disabled of every age either don’t drive or drive more safely if they do. What I’m not in favor of are drastic measures based on misleading and misunderstood statistics.
Yes, i agree that there’s a fine line between being concerned about seniors driving safely and ageism. Not all seniors are bad drivers…quite frankly, I’m worried more about the young 16 year old driving around, then someone who has 50 years of driving experience under the belt. I’ve heard aarp offers driving classes to their members…that’s a step in the right direction, imho.
I agree as well. I think there needs to be more driver’s education all around, not just for seniors - but also a more intensive educational program for new drivers. As people have mentioned both demographics have a higher chance of getting into accidents.
I have also heard about the drivers classes that aarp offers to their members, I don’t think we can place driving restrictions on seniors – but programs like that are a great step in the right direction.
What restrictions would you impose and at what age? If the restrictions are based on testing, how can one age group be singled out over another? For that matter, how will the testing be funded and/or administered? As an “older” person, who drives for a living, I have a real interest in your answers.
One important issue hasn’t been addressed. I think we should give some thought to why elderly drivers and young drivers are less safe than others. It seems to me that generally, young drivers are more dangerous because they are more reckless, and elderly drivers are more dangerous not becase they are elderly, but because of the physical limitations that sometimes come with old age.
We can’t test for recklessness, but we can test for those physical limitations, which means that while we can’t deny licenses to young people who drive recklessly, we can deny them to elderly people who are no longer fit to drive.
This makes a moot point of the argument that we shouldn’t restrict licenses for the elderly because we don’t restrict them for the young, who are statistically just as dangerous.
I don’t see how you consider that a moot point.
Unless of course you mean that the youngsters don’t know how they could possibly be a hazard and the oldsters by way of their years of experience are afraid that somehow they might be.
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… while we can’t deny licenses to young people who drive recklessly, we can deny them to elderly people who are no longer fit to drive.
Actually the insurance companies take good care of both instances.
It seems more likely to me that young drivers are more dangerous because they’re inexperienced. They don’t know the limitations of their own skill or their car’s handling, and the rules of the road are something they have to concentrate on rather than something they can follow reflexively.
We do restrict them for the young. In many states, from age 16-18 you can’t drive at night or with friends in the car, and of course you can’t get a license at all before age 16.
I work at various auto auctions as a semi retired old fart. Am 62 years old. Most of the drivers are older than I am. Some in their 80’s. Best drivers I ever saw.
Auto auctions don’t like to hire anyone under 40 or certainly 30 simply because younger drivers are terribly unsafe. They have not the long term experience and skills and the caution that comes with age and practice.
It is amazing how many young people have not a clue how to use a mirror. That is what all those mirrors on modern cars are for. It takes long term practice in using mirrors to let you squeeze by with inches or even half inches to spare. Backing up?? Use your damned mirrors!!!
Young farts many times can’t drive stick shifts either.-----and have no interest in learning. Ain’t that hard to learn you know.
So, the reckless drivers drive recklessly because they are inexperienced. Anyway, that’s irrelevant. What’s important here is that they drive dangerously for any reason other than physical limitation. Elderly people drive dangerously because of physical limitations. We can test to find out who the people with physical limitations are, and we can restrict their licenses, or fail to renew them.
We can’t seek out the reckless young drivers and restrict them, and that’s the kind of restriction I meant – not the blanket age restrictions, which we pretty much all agree are unfair for the elderly. What are you trying to argue here?
I was trying to point out that the argument you declared moot is not in fact an argument at all.
I think we agree in general, but I’m not sure where you’re going with this distinction between young drivers and old drivers. Not all the limitations that come with old age can be tested medically - it’d be hard to predict whether someone is going to get confused and stomp on the gas instead of the brake, for instance. And a blanket age restriction isn’t a fair solution to the problem of inexperienced young drivers, either. At the very least, the intermediate license restrictions should apply to all drivers for the first few years, no matter how old they are when they get their license.
Oh, ok. I thought you were trying to say that the argument I declared moot was in fact valid.
By testing, I meant driving tests. We can tell who’s not physocally fit to drive with those (granted we won’t be able to catch all the people who’ll confuse the gas for the brake).
Interesting you should mention hitting the gas instead of the brake.
When my son was 9 years old I had him behind the wheel helping me out here on the farm.
Generally just pulling up the truck while I positioned a fence post or something like that.
Now he’s one of the best drivers I’ve ever seen. My neighbor, who he’s worked for over the last 15 years, agrees btw.
Anyway I had my 18 year old daughter out helping me today.
She became confused several times forgetting what gear she was in. Gas instead of brake. That sort of thing. The kind of confusion that the many here are just attributing to oldsters.She had not had the early training that my son had.
I’ve said it before and evidentally it fell on deaf ears,or maybe a blind eye.
You put drivers in an unfamiliar situation and they will make mistakes. Its not just oldsters.
The drivers licence folks cannot be trusted to test.
Sometimes what they do is harmless and they probably have good intentions.
Here is a forinstance.
I’d been driving big trucks for years and forgot to renew my licence.
When I went down to get my air brake license one of the examiners had walked around my parked truck before I got outside to do the driving test.
She cracked a air valve that controlled an air hose to air up tires.
I had just driven that truck 30 miles to the drivers licence place.I knew everything was OK.
The lady giving me the test couldn’t explain the reasoning behind someone screwing around with my truck. After a verbal blast the last I saw of the woman who had fooled with my truck she was making tracks back inside the building.
Anyway if a drivers license testor is willing to fuck with a mans truck just think what they else they will do.
Of course we all know it was all for the greater good. Right?
I’ve tried to keep up with all the posts here so please forgive me if I am mistaken but has anyone noticed that the 3 professional truck drivers have said that its not
the elderly that are the problem but there are a few that are persistent in wanting to take their drivers licence away?
Then why do we never hear about 20 or 30 year old drivers plowing through a dozen people at a farmers’ market? Why is it that every news story where someone claims their gas pedal was stuck down, and they just couldn’t stop the car no matter how hard they pressed on the “brake”, involves an elderly driver?
Forgive me for finding it hard to believe that the examiner at the DMV sabotaged your vehicle.
IIRC, those posters mentioned that they’re near the age group in question themselves. What a surprise. You know, I used to drive for a living too… does that make my opinion worth more?
Finally, you can lose that strawman about “a few that are persistent in wanting to take their drivers license away”. No one is arguing for a blanket age restriction.
Forgive me for finding it hard to believe that the examiner at the DMV sabotaged your vehicle.
Find it anyway you want. Thats what happened.
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Then why do we never hear about 20 or 30 year old drivers plowing through a dozen people at a farmers’ market? Why is it that every news story where someone claims their gas pedal was stuck down, and they just couldn’t stop the car no matter how hard they pressed on the “brake”, involves an elderly driver?
So just how many times have you heard of this?
I can only remember 3 times.
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IIRC, those posters mentioned that they’re near the age group in question themselves. What a surprise. You know, I used to drive for a living too… does that make my opinion worth more?
If its true then Yes it does make your opinion worth more.
You have some experience that most don’t have.
I’m guessing it wasn’t long. You don’t seem to have the temperment for it.
Now think about what you are writing about.
I’ll skip the obvious jokes about memory and simply ask, how many of those 3 times involved drivers younger than, oh, 70?
All right. Then in my professional opinion, the glowing reports of elderly drivers’ safety we’ve seen here are due primarily to personal bias (unwillingness to admit that a group that includes you, or soon will, is dangerous) and self-selection (the people who can get a job driving for an auto auction are going to be the ones who are experienced and capable enough to be hired, not the confused old folks who get fleeced by telemarketers and can’t remember which pedal is the brake).
Swing and a miss. If you’d like to make any other false assumptions about my personal life, feel free to do so in the pit, because judging by this thread, you’d do better in a forum where facts and rational arguments aren’t so important.
I don’t think that you can discriminate because of age above the age of 18. You have to give ALL drivers of legal age the exact same test. Expensive, but worthwhile.
Of course we can discriminate against those under 18 ----restrict the hell out of them if we want to. They are not of legal age. Therefore they can be treated unequally. Can’t vote, can’t drink and should only be permitted to drive under the strictest restrictions. Probably shouldn’t be permitted to have sex either–just causes problems.
In my jusrisdiction (New South Wales), drivers over 80 years of age must undergo an annual driving test (the same one given to first time teenagers). I think it’s a good idea.