Thursday, July 16, 2009
Elderly drivers
For the last month or so me and my family have been doing every thing we could to get my grandmother to stop driving. To let you know that she is 89 years old and has just recovered from hip sergury. Every time i turn on the tv it seems like there has been another elderly person that has been killed or has killed someone else while driving a car. Honestly i beleive that every one has the right to drive a car and to drive as long as they can. But i think that every one when they hit a certain age, like 75 should be tested every 5 years or so to make sure that they are not a damage to them or to others on the road. The other day i was watching the tv and saw that a 83 year old driver had killed another person while driving and now he is being charged with vehicular manslaughter. I beleive before this happened they should have tested him to see if he shouldve been driving at all.
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I completely agree with you COMPLETELY! Elderly drivers drive me up the wall! (no pun intended). The other day I thought of a similar idea with the whole take a test over again after driving behind an elderly couple going 20 in a 35 coming home from work. I just wanted to get home and so did the line of 10 cars behind me. It was quite frustrating.
ReplyDeleteOne of the hardest things my parents ever did was take the keys away from my grandmother--this was not too long before they had to take her to a dementia ward. As a family, it seems like the best tactic is to talk this stuff through while loved ones are still lucid. (That doesn't answer the issue on the level of the Social, but that's my personal experience on this.)
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you that there comes a time where we really need to stop and assess our driving skills. I remember in 9th grade my social studies teacher asked us to come up with some laws that are not in existence and that we think need to be in place. So one of mines(oddly enough)was to test elderly drivers every year once they turn 70. I mean its a proven fact that as you get older your cognition and reaction isn't as good as it was years ago. I feel that elderly people shouldn't see it as an insult but more like an evaluation of their skills. At the end of the day no one should be on the road, if they can't pass a simple drivers test. If you really think about it, it doesn't make sense to just give somebody a licence at 16 and never ever assess their driving skills for the rest of their lives. And the average life expectancy is in the 70's, so basically for the next 60 plus years no one ever challenges their road skills. Thats pretty scary.
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