Drivers License laws

[Nyghthawk]

Over the last 15 years I watched two of my elderly neighbors badly wreck their cars before family could take their keys. Both times other innocent people were injured and their vehicles damaged due to old age denial and stubbornness. Whether or not this age group is more or less dangerous than another is a red herring. 18 year olds do get to be better drivers as time goes by based on statistics. 70 year olds do not.

We, as a society, have a right to safer streets and highways. Test everyone if an age (65) is too ageist. Everybody being tested is better than passing a test once (with me it was at 16) and NEVER being tested again regardless of age or ability. That's nuts!

[unimogbert]

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[slewis]

Testing every year or two in the elder years makes total sense to me. A co-worker of mine's mom is 88 and just got her license renewed -- no driving test, even -- for TEN years. Of course, Washington State government is clueless in a LOT of ways.... but yeah, this just endangers people.

[amyFB]

I think the will for independence and self sufficiency is very very strong in many people.

My suspicion is that it's not so much that are ignorant of the risk of harm to themselves or others.

Rather, I believe that the idea of depending on others for transportation is so demoralizing to think of that it is easier to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

That said, maybe the solution some of us need for our elderly relatives starts with expressing our understanding of the impact that not driving will have, followed by our ideas and commitment to helping out.

[Nyghthawk]

I'm with you, Amy. I think it is the idea that not being able to drive is the same as giving up any semblance of their dwindling independence. West of the Mississippi few cities have even adequate public transportation systems. In rural East Texas there is functionally none.

I understand the reluctance, I just hate to see some poor driver hurt or killed because of substandard public transportation and poor licensing laws. I have been driving 46 years since I was assessed for driving competency. My mother is 86, she was tested (what there was at the time) when she was 17. That was 69 years ago!

No wonder motor vehicle accidents cause 40-50K deaths every year in the USA.

[ewalling]

Generally speaking, I feel far more threatened by the young driving than the old. If we want to make the roads substantially safer, I'd recommend making young men up to the age of 25 a bigger target for more stringent legislation than the old.

[Nyghthawk]

I don't see it as a zero sum game. It is not either or. If the male drivers between 16-25 need more rigorous testing I don't have a problem with that. The elderly definitely do.

[McQ]

I work in an eye clinic in the middle of nowhere, rural New Hampshire. We routinely see people with significant vision impairments, (many “legally blind” by IRS standards) who continue to drive. When I find out the person in front of me has best corrected 20/400 vision, and is still driving, I do not hesitate to give it to them straight: “You do not see well enough to pass a driver’s license exam (it’s been 5-10 years since they last had their vision tested at the DMV), it is not safe for you to be driving, you are not the only person on the road.”
9 times out of 10 they explain they “never drive at night,” or “only drive in places I am familiar with,” or “just drive into town now and then.” Rarely does someone take what I say seriously and consider the safety of others on the road.
The DMV in my state and neighboring states allows mail-in renewals of driver’s licenses at certain intervals, and as others have mentioned, a person’s decline in faculties-not just vision- can occur quite rapidly.
I’ve seen people who can barely move, let alone walk, being wheeled out in a wheelchair, by a hospital volunteer, to their unequipped car, to drive 20 miles home.
Scary? You bet.
But I am sympathetic to their situation: loss of independence, lack of public transportation, lack of adequate support systems that would or could prevent them from getting behind the wheel. It’s a hard place to be.

[Wengr]

Males 16 - 25y/o, were tested for vision when they applied for a learners permit. There is no reason to assume that it is diminished. If they have a high accident rate, it's not due to diminished eyesight, it's due to diminished responsibility. It would be hard to test for that. Also, it has nothing to do with the concept of testing for diminished skills where we expect to find them.

[Chicago Sandy]

>>”...most of the stories of "stuck accelerators" on vehicles when old people plow through crowds are really no mechanical failures at all, just people who lost the ability to safely operate a vehicle due to failing nerves, vision, hearing, reflexes, etc.”<<

I respectfully disagree. One night when I was 60, after I filled the tank and started it up to leave the gas station and enter the street, my 2002 Taurus suddenly accelerated before I could even reach any pedal. (We’re not talking automatic transmission “forward creep” here). I had to drive with both feet pressing hard on the brake to wrestle it home. At a traffic light, I turned the engine off, and started it back up (feet on brake) when the light turned green. It roared and lurched forward. I actually had to floor the brake and was terrified I wouldn’t make it into my garage.

Next morning, the tow-truck operator started it up and it roared and kicked and bucked…even in reverse. When we got to the dealership the mechanics watched, terrified, as he wrestled it off the flatbed and on to the pavement. The service dept. head admitted that stuck accelerators were a known issue with 1998-2004 Ford Tauruses and Explorers, but it would take >$2K in labor to dig deeply enough to remove and replace the throttle linkage.

Several AGF-ers had the temerity to tell me at the time that uncontrollable spontaneous acceleration was an “urban myth” and that I was so senile that I must have had my foot on the wrong pedal. Horse hockey. The only way to get those pedals mixed up is if your neuropathy is so bad that you can’t tell what your feet are doing—the pedals are shaped differently, operate differently, and require different foot motions (forward flexion with little force for the accelerator, flat-footed pressure for the brake). I am sure that there are elderly people so confused (or with such severe peripheral neuropathy) that they hit the wrong pedals—but I can assure you that was not the case with me: my experience was real, reproducible by several people who had occasion to try and drive my car, and validated by the service department.

That being said, I am 66; at 65 I had to go to the DMV for a vision test and updated photo. I wholeheartedly endorse requiring re-testing vision, physical driving skills, reaction time and judgment starting either at 75 or earlier if the driver had a collision possibly caused by impaired driving ability or vision. It should not be some b.s. jaunt around the cones in a parking lot (my road test in Seattle back in the day was on public streets, and required a “K-turn,” backing straight around a corner, parallel parking, and both parking and starting up on a hill without rolling backward; I flunked the first time because the driving school’s car stalled on the latter maneuver. I used a different driving school at a different test facility for my second, successful test).

Instead, it should be on a realistic driving simulator that includes merging onto a highway as well as all other skills (I realize that for parking and backing-up a dashboard backup camera would have to suffice, unless the simulator were so sophisticated that it had a realistic projection of the rear scenery). That way, nobody gets hurt if the driver makes a serious mistake.

And perhaps hands-on lessons should be given by dealerships (for all ages) as to how to operate the complex electronic equipment in the modern vehicles they just purchased: digital touchscreen entertainment, hands-free telephone, voice command, climate, navigation systems, and cruise control—as well as instruction in how to handle emergencies such as stuck accelerators on an open highway, power-steering and power-brake failure, and entering a car with electronic locks when the battery is dead.

[Mandobart]

Originally Posted by Chicago Sandy

>>”...most of the stories of "stuck accelerators" on vehicles when old people plow through crowds are really no mechanical failures at all, just people who lost the ability to safely operate a vehicle due to failing nerves, vision, hearing, reflexes, etc.”<<

I respectfully disagree. One night when I was 60, after I filled the tank and started it up to leave the gas station and enter the street, my 2002 Taurus suddenly accelerated before I could even reach any pedal. (We’re not talking automatic transmission “forward creep” here). I had to drive with both feet pressing hard on the brake to wrestle it home. At a traffic light, I turned the engine off, and started it back up (feet on brake) when the light turned green. It roared and lurched forward. I actually had to floor the brake and was terrified I wouldn’t make it into my garage....

And yet you still drove your car, not sure if you would be able to control it? I would submit this decision puts a person squarely in the "failing nerves, vision, hearing, reflexes, etc.” camp. Making a conscious decision to operate an inoperable vehicle is no different than deciding to drive after an evening of drinking. You risked the life of everyone else out on the road between the gas station and your home. Its not something to brag about.