Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Here we are, some more news about old people and their awful driving. This particular article comes from Fox News and is entitled States Under Pressure to Restrict Older Drivers.

SHILOH, Ill. — After an 84-year-old driver plowed through an elementary school lunchroom this week, killing an 8-year-old boy, his mother pressed lawmakers to bar the elderly from getting behind the wheel.

“We very much support a mandatory limit on the driving age for seniors,” Amanda Wesling wrote in a missive directed at driver Grace Keim, who authorities say was en route to a driving class at a senior citizen’s center Monday when she struck Ryan Wesling.

I don’t necessarily support a mandatory age where a person’s license should be taken away, however, I do support testing at regular intervals for individuals at an advanced age equally as arbitrary as the drinking age, or the age of adulthood. Hmm, 55 is senior citizen age, right? How about everyone has to take a driving test every two years after the age of 55, and then every year after the age of 70. Sounds fair.

While many states have enacted or are considering tougher testing for older drivers, they’re weighing those changes against the rights of millions of older people to have the independence a license allows.

The rights of millions of older people to drive? Excuse me? Every damn holiday, I am reminded by some self-important, drunk-on-power, righteous hump from the Ohio State Highway Patrol, via a local newscast, that driving is a privilege and that drinking and driving and getting caught will subject you to Ohio’s unconstitutional OVI ordeal. (Thank God we have the state to babysit us.) What’s the sudden right old people have to drive that the rest of us don’t?

“The issue is not age; it has to do with the person’s physical and mental limitations, and that goes beyond age,” said Beverly Moore of Illinois’ AARP.

It does go beyond age, but age is certainly a major congtributing factor. The greater your age, the more likely you are to experience serious mental and physical limitations that impair your driving. In fact, a 70 year-old driver may be as dangerous as a drunk driver. I’d say that’s pretty serious. The damn highway patrol needs to do its job and crack down on these dangerous old people the same way they obsess over drunk drivers and cell phone users. How about some rights-violating DOA (Driving Over Age) checkpoints strategically set up to catch these killers?

Older drivers, she says, still tend to be more cautious behind the wheel, and family members can be involved in helping decide when a driver should give up the keys.
…
Studies have shown that vision, reaction time and other driving skills can diminish as drivers age.

They’re not “cautious”, they’re reacting more slowly - and more dangerously.

Drivers 85 and older are about as likely to be involved in a fatal crash as those ages 16 to 19, but they’re more likely to die than others in car crashes because their bodies are frailer, according to the institute.

I hope the fact that old people are as likely to cost the insurance companies money as teenagers is reflected in their insurance premiums each month. Somehow I doubt it. Wait, they’re more frail, so they’re more injured, or dead, so they probably cost the insurance companies more per accident for the same number of accidents. How much are those premiums again?

While sympathetic to Ryan’s family, 67-year-old Joan Juergens considers his death “totally a freak occurrence” that shouldn’t require stiffening Illinois’ licensing requirements for older drivers.

“I don’t think you can broadbrush one age group and say it can’t drive anymore. It’s unfair,” Juergens said.

No, but you can certainly broadbrush anyone who uses a cell phone, or anyone who has two beers in an evening and curtail their driving. That’s certainly fair.

Any person, no matter what their age or what the circumstance, who cannot properly control a vehicle and who cannot keep up with the flow of traffic is dangerous. Period. The law and those who enforce it choose to select certain targets based on sympathy or lack thereof, not any kind of objective reasoning. Evidence supports that fact that old drivers are a hazard on the road, so don’t insult my intelligence by telling me they have a “right” to drive, or that they’re more “cautious”. State your case for what it is: You feel sorry for them, and you don’t have time to drive around your 80 year-old mother. And if you’re a politician, you know old people vote, and if you take away their licenses, your sorry ass is out of a job. A little intellectual honesty goes a long way, and lack of facts or reason, especially in Ohio, doesn’t mean you won’t get your way.