The European Union wants elderly people (70+) to undergo medical tests from now on to prove that they are still capable of driving a car every five years. However, the proposal has been met with a lot of criticism.
Everyone mentions cognitive abilities, which is also important, but really physical abilities should be tested as well.
Here in america, My 89 y.o. grandmother (at the time) used canes to get around. Got her license renewed just by a written test, no one batted an eye. The fact that she “walked” in was enough and no one saw that she would physically have to pull her leg up to push the brake pedal.
She got into quite a few fender benders after that, and 1 pretty bad accident that totalled her car. That bad accident was responsible for a huge decline in health. She cant drive any longer, but between the insurance and the burden on family to support her ailing health, it all could have been avoided if they required a doctor’s signature for renewal.
I do realize that something like this takes away from feeling independent and maintaining autonomy, and i feel for that. It sucks that part of growing old is…well, growing old, but should those emotions outweigh personal and public safety?
There was a man who lived on my street who drove way way way into old age. His car was literally covered from front to back in dents. You’d see him walking to his car so slowly it was painful. He’d struggle to get the door open, hop in, and take off. It seemed like he had a new dent every time he came home.
I knew another man though, WWII vet, 98 years old. His wife was 93. He’d come to my store and buy cigars for himself and cigarettes for the wife. He had no issues getting around at all. I was legit shocked when I found out how old he was. His health deteriorated so quickly seemingly out of nowhere and he was still trying to drive, but fortunately his daughter stepped in and put an end to it.
Now his daughter has dementia. One day she stopped in to buy cigarettes for her mom and she asked me if I knew her son. It kind of took me by surprise. I’ve known the whole family for 20 years at this point.
Her son had a serious car accident in the mid 2000s and he’s been in a wheelchair since. He lost both of his legs, half of one of his hands, fingers burned off at the ends on the other. He barely survived.
She was telling me about the accident like it had just recently happened. She was crying, said almost word for word what she’d said to me all those years ago while he was in the hospital. Such a surreal experience.
Next time I seen her she asked me again, “Do you know my son?”
Then she tried to pay for her fuel 3 times back to back.
She’s still driving. Everyone knows that she’s experiencing these problems including the local police, but she’s still out there driving around.
I feel like this makes for a good argument for adequate public transit in the United States. If elderly people had access to public transit, then they might not feel like they are losing their independence if they can’t drive.
There’s a pretty serious concern here about the mobility and independence of the elderly… but that can’t be put over and above public safety. I see either very anxious and hesitant, or completely off with the fairies and uncaring elderly drivers on a frequent basis.
They wouldn’t get anywhere near a licence if they had to demonstrate their competence even once more, let alone semi-regularly.
Mobility for the eldery IS important but IMHO there should be affordable, easy accessible options without the use of a personal vehicle. Otherwise it get’s harder and harder for the eldery to participate in social activities which are beneficiary to mental health and prevent early symptoms of Alzheimers disease.
Well, indeed, nobody actively wants the elderly to be forced in to solitude and isolation. If anything, the advent of driverless vehicles would be of greatest benefit to them rather than tech bros who want a nap.
Here in the Netherlands I see a lot of old people being bussed around point-to-point with minibuses. Likely limited to the bigger cities though where there also better normal public transit options.
Very good. As a german, I’d welcome this.
However, expect heavy pushback from the German automotive industry. They are for Germany what the NRA and weapons manufacturer lobby is to the US.
If a german pensioneer can’t drive a german car with more than 250 kph on the german Autobahn from north to south, west to east: how can we have EINIGKEIT UND RECHT UND FREIHEIT?
/s
You are missing this: !!!1111
Does the German automotive industry also exercise immense power and influence in both politics and society?
That’s a solid “Yes, definitely!”
Germany is unbelievably car-centric for a developed country. It’s also nicely planned, so most of the time you can survive pretty well without a car, but car is still the king here
When the idea of a general speed limit was proposed, people were literally screeching “but muh freedom!!!”
Germany has more cars per capita than the US and Germany is the only country without a speedlimit on motorways. So yes, they definitely do
Not true. Numbers from 2020: USA 919 Germany 628
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita?wprov=sfti1
Looks like you’re right, I heard this fact in a YouTube video or something and didn’t check against. I’m sorry, I don’t want to spread misinformation.
No, but the pensioneers themselves do having nearly an absolute majority in elections.
Why would there be any pushback from the industry? They don’t have to. Pensioneers basically have an absolute majority (I think the 50:50 cut in voters was at 60,something and raising last federal election) so they already control all policies.
If they would do that we would finally get a strong lobby for decent public transport!
Good, I completely agree with this. Maybe once they hit 80, every year.
Why 80 years old even needs to drive? Their reflexes are slow, their vision is bad, their hearing is catastrophic. Why just dont let someone drive them/use taxi/public transport?
I agree but for that we would need good and inexpensive public transport
Also walkable neighbourhoods where the grocery store is always close enough that most days, elderly people won’t really NEED any transport.
A bus stop 400 meters away is nice, but you know what is nicer? The grocery store being 300 meters away.
Of course there’s still doctors appointments and such, but that’s where public transport can still step in and help.
While I totally agree, and myself when or if I hit 80 probably wont be driving around, it will still happen. There will be stubborn 80 and above that will continue to want to drive for their independence. And if they want to, they should absolutely be tested.
Honestly tho, lets get real here for a minute. This is a large 1 ton machine that could easily kill someone. Shouldn’t we have mandatory tests eventually for everyone? I mean, after driving for 25 years or so, there have been rules that have changed, safety measures that are different than when I took drivers ed, and lets face it, my skills are nearly as sharp as they used to be due to complacency we all experience.
Wouldn’t that idea lower the amount of traffic fatalities a bit? I could see it turn into a cash grab and there would be strong opposition. I don’t know, maybe I’m just stoned.
Good Idea. It’s widely accepted that cognitive capabilities can decline rapidly with old age. It simply makes no sense that a person that needs 8 tries and 10 minutes to change the station on their TV is still allowed to operate a two ton death machine without any checks in place.
The important part here is to make it so that it ONLY “catches” declined driving capabilities and is not also biased in terms of social and financial status or maybe if you’re an immigrant or something.
Reaction speed in particular.
If you steer your 3 ton SUV around a corner and suddenly find yourself facing off a mother pushing her stroller across…or if you´re on the Autobahn and round the bend, there´s the tail end of a traffic jam…reaction speed is what makes the difference between “holy shit” and “that´s it”.
By the way, there ARE aspects of operating a motorvehicle on public roads that would warrant regular refreshers at all ages, like first aid or keeping up with the ever changing traffic laws. And I´d be totally up for that. But that´s another discussion.
Oh and ask me about mandatory basic child health and safety courses for soon to be parents. Yes, I have lots of opinions ;-)
This is quite a brilliant idea. Although we could argue that everyone of all ages should be somewhat tested every x years. The amount of people that are over confident and forget things on the road is quite scary.
I kind of agree with this, I do think that an exam should be done every so many years, but I don’t think that full on driving test should need to be done. At most maybe a minimal test like make sure you can still do intersections fine and make sure you still know how to use your blinker in Etc but honestly I don’t feel like a full-on test is going to be beneficial for anything, a timed exam with common sense questions such as who has the right away in this situation, or when is it appropriate to go through a yellow, basic stuff
In the case of the eu, this isn’t an actually a driving test; it is more so of a medical test so like vision and memory tests to verify that you still have situational awareness, which I think will do tremendously more then your standard driving test where you may not even hit a situation that requires a lot of situational awareness
In my opinion it should be doctor every 5 years, driving test every 10. And as you get significantely older both intervals get reduced.
I don’t think that full on driving test should need to be done
A full on driving test should be done at least once though. Where I live (Pennsylvania), the “driving test” is basically going around the block and then parallel parking one time. In no sense can it be considered as a comprehensive test of a driver’s command of a wide range of potential situations.
I do agree with you, but most of those people do that on purpose and will just drive like they should for those 30/60 minutes. I don’t see elderly be able to do that.
Honestly seeing how people drive ~10 years after getting their licence I think we need a kind of test every 10 years, not necessarily because of declining cognitive capacity but just generally forgetting about safety
although it would be pretty expensive to check absolutely everyone
That’s how Italy does it already
I agree with this except im too cynical to believe people just forget about safety. People learn to pass the test and then drive how ever the hell they like. Granted alot of people are safe but i see far too many people just completely disregarding anyone else on the road and their only goal is to get to the front of the line as fast as possible and screw everone else.
They can retake their test, they will drive safely and carefully that one day and then go right back to being selfish idiots.
I would maybe go as far as to say thst there is a requirement to have a black box installed in all cars that gets switched off/removed after a number of years of safe driving. And if you drive badly or unsafely then your insurance goes up every year until you prove you are safe.
Maybe it goes up by x amount £100 or like 10% or 20% a year until you stop driving badly but remains at the price it was when you start driving safe for 3 years before dropping back down to the price it would be without the increases you incurred. That would stop people from trying to cheat the system.
It may be extreme but if you are driving safely you have nothing to worry about.
Of course we would have to nail down exactly what counts as unsafe driving so it wasnt overly/unjustly critical.
I mean… maybe its a bad idea. But again. If its not you then you needn’t be worried.
Here in Germany your insurance fee goes down every year you don’t cause an accident. But if you cause an accident it will go up again.
Yeah we have thst in the UK but im not aware of the amount thar it has contributed to reducing colissions and deaths.
People can have crashes and avoid increasing their insurance by not informing the insurer and working our the costs between the two people involved in the accident.
I was hit by someone speeding out of a side road once and they didnt have insurance as it was a company car that belonged to their dad.
I didnt claim as the damage to my car was minimal and the car was a 15 year old POS anyway. I just kept it running until it died of natural causes and kept my lower insurance cost safe :)
Lol… First they came for the people doing 20 over, and I don’t drive 20 over, so I said nothing. Then they came for the ones doing 15 over, and I don’t do 15 over, so I said nothing…
You’re talking about applying fees and profits to people deemed “less safe” by some arbitrary measurement, and assuming that said fees and profits will never be applied to you because you meet what will be the likely initial standard, but you’re assuming the arbitrary measurement will remain fixed… And it absolutely will not.
The thing is, the revenue you’re suggesting as an incentive to avoid those behaviors will become a documented and budgeted source of revenue for someone, somewhere, and if your pie in the sky works, and said revenue reduces because the roads get safer, the people who’ve budgeted that revenue will be incentivised to tighten the restrictions to regain the revenue loss, all in the name of safety, of course…
Of course, you have nothing to worry about if you’re willing to comply with the increasingly restricting goalposts…
Firstly it was a hypothetical. I made that pretty clear.
Second i literally said in my comment that we would need to define was considered unsafe driving so it wasn’t overly critical or unjust. So there would be nothing arbitrary about it.
You raise a good point about the revenue becoming budgeted but that is something that would be taken into account if such a system was ever devised. The revenue would have to be spent subsidising safe drivers lower insurance fees and be an acceptable loss in the event that unsafe drivers become safe drivers. At least it should not be considered as profit.
I accept that i know very little about these systems so i cant really talk about how they would work but to be honest if you are more concerned about who profits feom unsafe drivers increased insurance premiums than making roads safe then im not sure you should have a say either.
Also we already have optional black boxes to lower insurance costs in the UK so there is a precedent for this and thst might be a good starting point. They must already be considering the fluctuations in profits for those insurance packages.
Ultimately i was preaenting a hypothetical and i wasnt willing to die on that hill.
You don’t have to die anywhere ;)
It’s got merit, and quite a few US insurers have similar programs, either via an OBD port dongle or through an app. My wife has an app on her cell phone that monitors her driving, and mainly cell usage, and frankly, I think that specifically is a hell of a good metric for safety these days.
I like it as an incentive. I DONT like it as a matter of law or policy, for previously state reasons.
You don’t gotta die on any hills though, I come for the simple discourse and don’t consider disagreement to be hostility. I just got removed resting comment syndrome or some shit I think ;)
Fair enough. I sometimes see agression where it isnt present.
Regardless i just cant stand the attitude that many drivers adopt of “me first”.
that’s true, a lot of people probably KNOW how to drive safely (according to their license’s definition) but just don’t care
About the black box thing, that may actually be a good idea, but hard to execute
not necessarily because of declining cognitive capacity but just generally forgetting about safety
And because rules, regulations and the reality of traffic changes.
There’s this new move to make roads where bicycles are granted priority more prevalent, but the specific rules of how it works are completely unknown to most people who got their license more than 10 years ago. Same for reserved car sharing parking spots. Same for some rules around electric vehicles, etc. etc.
It would just be good to make sure people who are operating a vehicle are current on the rules of actually driving a car - rather than relying on “that’s how I learned it, back in the day!”
An online test that you have to pass to renew your license would work well enough.
Good. Old people will tolerate a terrifying number of medical problems before going to a doctor
My father has heart + breathing problems causing him to randomly get dizzy+out of breath whilst sitting down doing nothing. We’ve told him he shouldn’t be driving but he says he knows what he’s doing as he’s been driving for over 60yrs. We reported him to the DVLA because he’s going to kill someone.
Yes, please make it happen! There was a subreddit called /r/RentnerFahrenInDinge (pensioners driving into things) that was full of new articles of elderly people being completely clueless in traffic.
I wish I would have known this back in May
Yeah this is really good. My wives grandfather is still allowed to drive, but I wouldnt go anywhere near him when hes driving.
This would be great. We should also require all drivers to pass small exams every ~10 years in order to assert that they are up to date with new laws and new types of infrastructure.
That seems wildly regressive and disproportionately would harm working poor people, who generally would struggle to afford the time and expense involved.
There’s no evidence that experience degrades driving skill, just aging
There’s no evidence that experience degrades driving skill, just aging
Have you never seen a taxi or professional on the road before? lol
As for the working poor, you could easily say that using tax money and law changes that you could force them to get a paid day off once per 10 years for the test, and maybe free lessons and a payout for time spent. I’m sure that the gain in tax money from lower road usage and deaths would pay for this service and replacement transport like public buses.
Good.
Normalize checking peoples cognitive abilities.
Provided age is not the trigger given that no proof has been provided supporting the age limit.
I can sort of understand the downvotes, but can anyone link a study maybe?
Well random age limits are all over. For Voting, Working, optainig the driver license, drinking, being out late, You name it.
Medical tests?? bleh. Driving is driving, health is health. All drivers should have a to retake basic driving tests at an increasing rate until by the age of 70 where it maxes out at once per 5 years or something.
I agree, especially since medical tests won’t show the driver slowing down as they enter a roundabout or taking a full minute to shift lanes or positioning themselves so they can’t even look in the rearview mirror.
A ton of driving is about behaviors and tendencies. A driver that has no awareness of other drivers is a dangerous driver, regardless of how good their heart, eyes, or reaction time. Dementia obviously affects this, but you can get a clean bill of health from your doctor and then drive off home in the left lane at 5 below the speed limit because other people are just going too damn fast.
drive off home in the left lane at 5 below the speed limit because other people are just going too damn fast.
You do realize that the speed limit is an actual maximum speed, not a recommended speed?
This sounds totally reasonable, maybe the time frame is even a little too long for people over 80. Like it or not, your body, sight, reflexes etc do change.
My country has this system, and at the check the doctor also can determine how often you need to take a check.
