All too often I think the discussion misses the fact that there is no alternative to driving for the vast majority of US citizens. Busses, trains, walking, biking, etc are not viable options because US infrastructure & city planning overwhelmingly neglects everything but the automobile.
It is supposedly a personal moral failing every time someone drives too old, too tired, or too impaired, but if trains, busses, & walking were the default ways to get around then this chronic societal problem would diminish dramatically. Incompetent driving is rooted in systemic failures, not personal moral ones.
The moral failing is that of personally encouraging, supporting or defending car dependency, along with the other more failing of not trying anything to reverse it.
In Germany drivers licenses issued before 2013 do not expire, meaning basically every senior would have to give up their license of their own accord. Spoiler: they generally keep driving, even when it’s abundantly clear that they shouldn’t.
not anymore, they will be replaced with EU licenses and also expire after 15 years. but you don’t need to take a test to renew, but that also applies to the licenses issued after 2013.
There are plans to make a test for people of 70 years of age mandatory, but that will still take a while…
Heck, I’d support regular testing for everyone. Laws change, best practices change and regular testing is a good way to keep most up to date. It would cost, be a hassle and extremely unpopular. But if it saves lives and/or make traffic softer it is worth it.
Oh I know man, I know
I recently saw some numbers, published by an automobile club, that suggested drivers over the age of 70 are involved in only 13% of crashes. My first thought was, that number is only that low because every other driver is already very cautious around old people in cars. And they usually drive rather slow. Still no reason to defend older people in death machines.
also probably they drive less, as they’re likely to no longer be working for a living and so don’t commute?
Yeah, that number is kinda meaningless without the context of how many road kilometers/hours people over 70 are doing in comparison to the number of crashes
Yep. To the supermarket twice a week, and to church on Sunday, and that’s it. No commute, no mom-bus, no driving for work. Basically off the road for good, and still involved in 13% of all accidents.
You are right! I didn’t even thought that far. It just made me kind of mad.
Accidents per 1000km would be a much better metric. Or km/accident. Both say pretty much the same thing but have different readability.
Just put them into relation with factors like “distance driven”, and the picture turns upside down.
Suddenly, the old people who don’t commute daily or drive children around to school and other activities like younger people do, but only drive to the supermarket twice a week and to church on Sunday end up in a different place on the statistics.
A paying customer is a paying customer
What are they going to do instead. Apparate?
In the Netherlands you are tested every 5 years after the age of 70. So many people lose their licence and end up stuck in the middle of nowhere because there is no public transport and most affordable retirement homes have been shut down. So my dad, who is in his eighties and has passed his tests so far, drives around looking after them.
Them not driving is a small inconvenience compared to the risk of killing themselves or someone else. Driving is not a right, it’s a privilege with real and dangerous consequences. The ability to do it safely needs to remain the most important factor when distributing licenses.
If there were other options that would be great.
That’s what we’re all about. We should build cities to allow alternative options besides cars
@Zana @RGB3x3 It’s quite funny how the whole premise of this sub/community is “it’s insane that driving cars is the main option for transportation in many places, we should strive for our cities/countries to build other, better, more sane options” but there’s always a comment in every post reminding us that there “aren’t any other options.”
The tests they make these old people take are a joke. They’re nowhere near as complex or demanding as a regular driving exam, which is supposed to confirm you’re a good enough driver to be on the road.
As an alternative, public transport exists. It’s been heavily reduced in remote areas, but it didn’t disappear completely.
Aside from ebikes for the more healthy elderly, there are also slower vehicles that don’t require a license old people can use. These things are limited in speed (±25-45km/h) but they’ll get you to the nearest train station and back.
I do feel bad for the old people stuck with little available transport, but I’ve also had more than enough near crashes with old people that look like they don’t even know where they are that I can’t really get mad about this.
We need to invest more into public transport and, in a few decades, driverless cars, but I don’t think that’s going to happen with the current price of healthcare and the absolutely devastating impact of boomers growing old will have on our social system. I doubt we’ll get this fixed anytime soon, if it even happens in our own lifetimes. Things will get much worse for the elderly before they’ll get better, we need to get our elderly to become less dependent or our entire social security system will simply collapse under the weight of elderly care.
For context: to maintain our current (severely lacking) level of care, one in four people in the Netherlands will have to work in healthcare in 2040, an increase from our current 1 in 7. This is despite increase in spend in healthcare that happened despite the conservative governments we’ve had for the past two decades. After nearly 80 years of ignoring the population boom problem, we’re starting to see the impact it’s going to have on our society, and it’s not pretty.
@starlinguk @veganpizza69 the village I live in has a on-demand shuttle bus for seniors. This is not hard to solve for.
I thought cities in the Netherlands were required to have public transit?
Smaller towns tend to have public transit, but it would be something like “hourly buses between 9 and 5 except on Saturdays, Sundays, and bank holidays” with possibly a few kilometers of walking distance to the closest bus stop.
The more populated your area is, the better your public transit will be, but if you can’t walk to the bus stop you’ll have to rely on external services (that are available but not exactly cheap or easy). This is especially bad in the more remote areas (i.e. old people living on a farm, not willing to sell their house for a much smaller appartement close to the services they need).
