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How is it possible that we don't have mandatory driving tests once you reach certain ages, ie 80, 85, 95+? I just heard the other week that my friend's great-gr

How is it possible that we don't have mandatory driving tests once you reach certain ages, ie 80, 85, 95+? I just heard the other week that my friend's great-great grandma (98 years old) is still driving. If someone that old can still drive safely, good for them, but there should be a mandatory test to check that.

digitalengineer 7y ago
Perhaps because the generation making the laws are baby boomers? (And don’t want to loose their access to their cars?) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/17/generation-sociopaths-review-trump-baby-boomers-ruined-world https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/17/generation-soc...
- cafard 7y ago
  My late mother-in-law's neighbor drove until something over 90, which pretty much nobody thought was a great idea. I don't think the boomers of Pennsylvania did anything to enable this except leave the laws unchanged.
jmull 7y ago
Here's some data to inform: https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/ https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuri... From this, 60s is peak age range for driving safety. In the 70s people are still good. 80+ are still pretty good in the "All crashes" and "Injury crashes" categories (a little better than people 25-29, a little worse than people 30-39), but they are really bad in "Fatal crashes" -- even a little worse than 16-17yo. Digging into the fatalities, the spike in deaths caused by old people are themselves and not passengers or others. So I guess the motivation for driving tests for old people would be to protect them from themselves and should apply to people 80+. If we want to protect people from bad drivers generally, we should really want to do something about 16-17yos (just pushing back the driving age might not do it because inexperience is probably a significant factor). Actually something like more monitoring/training/tests for drivers, say, 16-24 would be the best place to start. (Drivers 25-29 are also a problem, but presumably if you improve younger drivers the older age range will take care of itself as the good young drivers age.)
- bsanr 7y ago
  >Police-reported So the parent established that, in his case, a crash took place but was not recorded by the police. Police are known to give the benefit of the doubt to certain classes of people, leaving incidents that they cause outside of formal records and review. Is this a widespread phenomenon that could skew the data presented in your citation? I think that's worth investigating.

digitalengineer 7y ago

Perhaps because the generation making the laws are baby boomers? (And don’t want to loose their access to their cars?) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/17/generation-sociopaths-review-trump-baby-boomers-ruined-world https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/17/generation-soc...

cafard 7y ago
My late mother-in-law's neighbor drove until something over 90, which pretty much nobody thought was a great idea. I don't think the boomers of Pennsylvania did anything to enable this except leave the laws unchanged.

jmull 7y ago

Here's some data to inform: https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/ https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuri... From this, 60s is peak age range for driving safety. In the 70s people are still good. 80+ are still pretty good in the "All crashes" and "Injury crashes" categories (a little better than people 25-29, a little worse than people 30-39), but they are really bad in "Fatal crashes" -- even a little worse than 16-17yo. Digging into the fatalities, the spike in deaths caused by old people are themselves and not passengers or others. So I guess the motivation for driving tests for old people would be to protect them from themselves and should apply to people 80+. If we want to protect people from bad drivers generally, we should really want to do something about 16-17yos (just pushing back the driving age might not do it because inexperience is probably a significant factor). Actually something like more monitoring/training/tests for drivers, say, 16-24 would be the best place to start. (Drivers 25-29 are also a problem, but presumably if you improve younger drivers the older age range will take care of itself as the good young drivers age.)

bsanr 7y ago
>Police-reported So the parent established that, in his case, a crash took place but was not recorded by the police. Police are known to give the benefit of the doubt to certain classes of people, leaving incidents that they cause outside of formal records and review. Is this a widespread phenomenon that could skew the data presented in your citation? I think that's worth investigating.