An 81-year-old woman was killed and four other people were seriously injured in a two-car collision in Kent on Saturday morning.
The woman was driving a gold Toyota Corolla that slammed into the back of a black Ford Edge sports utility vehicle that was stopped for a red light at the intersection of Southeast 208th Street and Southeast 108th Avenue, Kent police said. The crash occurred at 9:44 a.m. and forced the Ford 75 feet across the intersection.
The reason why we ban young people from driving is no different from the reason we need to ban old people from driving.
At what age would you suggest that driving be “banned”?
I’m 63. Seem to be driving fine. Should I have to give up my license now? Next year?
My Dad was a perfectly fine driver at 91. At 93 no one sane would have let him drive anywhere.
I know another driver in his mid-60’s who shouldn’t have had a driver’s license ever.
It seems to me that mandatory on-the-road driver’s tests for every renewal over 60 would be a reasonable solution.
RKW
The difference is, young people don’t vote. Old people, OTOH, vote every time. Don’t expect to see this change anytime soon.
@1 starting at 65 we need to require drivers to re-pass the test when they renew their licenses.
Maybe we could just ban everything and living could be considered a felony. That seems to be the only way to satisfy everyone.
How are they supposed to shop or go to the doctor? Old people can hardly be asked to stop driving now, after a lifetime spent nixing proposals to build a transit system.
There’s no hard and fast rule for being too old to drive. My step mother is about 81 and drives just fine. Testing is the only way to evaluate this.
Incidentally, I wonder what made that woman slam into the back of a stopped car? I wouldn’t assume it was senility. Maybe she had a stroke while driving. And those kinds of accidents can really happen to anyone.
I’m really hoping that self-driving cars will be perfected by the time I’m too decrepit to drive.
The problem isn’t drivers, young, old or in-between. It’s cars. We’ve hitched our wagon to the automobile and wasted huge amounts of our countryside on roads, parking lots, roads that ARE parking lots, and a national energy policy absolutely dependent upon liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Being forced to commute long distances by car is insane. When my conveniently-located, accessible-by-subway company relocated from the city to a suburban office park, I found myself commuting 100 miles daily, by car. It’s expensive, it’s smelly, it’s boring, it’s completely inhumane, and it’s deadly. Over the three years of my torment, I must have seen 100 serious accidents, many probably involving crippling injuries or deaths.
For all the wealth we waste on buying, fueling, maintaining and supporting our cars, trucks and highways, and mopping up the consequences, we could have easily built a comprehensive network of mass transit and freight transport systems, and we wouldn’t now be so dependent on petroleum.
Disclosure: I walk, bicycle, ride mass transit, and also drive.
Police are investigating reports that a short time before the deadly crash, the Corolla was involved in another collision a mile south of the intersection.
Maybe the after effects of the first collision got to the driver, or maybe she was addled before she put her key in the ignition, or maybe someone in her car was injured from the first collision and in her adrenaline state she figured red lights didn’t apply to her or that vehicles ahead of her would magically move. Age isn’t necessarily a factor here.
BTW, “line king” Al Hirschfeld was driving his car in his 90s.
@1 That’s what everyone says, until *they* fail the test.
But driving is private, @9. During those three years of boring commuting, nobody begged you for change or killed you for your wallet or just plain went psycho on you because they could. Plus, cars are infinitely more flexible than mass transit, and you can haul more than a couple bags of groceries with them. I enjoy being able to pick up and go wherever I want whenever I feel like it, without having to look at bus/train schedules, wait in line, wait for the bus/train to show up, wait as it makes every stop I don’t need, and then still walk six blocks to my destination.
If we want to ban dangerous drivers based on age, it would seem to make more sense to ban the young. According to census.gov, the 2007 fatal accident rate per 100 000 licensed drivers was 54 for those under 19, 51 for those 20 to 24 years old, but only 32 for those over 75:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2…
Old people driving is a major social problem, but only because driving itself is the #1 social problem.
@13 Death per licensed driver doesn’t take into account the disparate amount of driving done at different ages. A more useful stat would be death by miles driven. If it turns out that older drivers drive a lot less than younger ones, the impression those stats give will be the opposite.
@12 Ummm… I’ve been commuting via mass transit, and walking, and bicycling a whole lot longer than 3 years, and in general I have to say that compared to car commuting, a) the inconveniences are quite minor by comparison, b) your fears are completely overblown, and c) an mp3 player and book on mass transit are a complete and private joy.
Oh, and D) some inattentive asshole in another car, sideswiping or rear-ending you or flying over the barrier separating you from the oncoming lanes, is a MAJOR intrusion on your privacy.
Mandatory road tests every 5 years after 60, mandatory road tests every 2 years after 75. OLD PEOPLE DRIVING ARE FUCKING DANGEROUS. Scientific studies (which I’m not going to bother to link, find them yourselves) have shown that driving while elderly is comparable to driving while impaired due to inferior reaction time and reduced visual acuity that most elderly people are naturally subject to.
While riding my bike to south center today, several times I had to cuss out “young people” in cars, who were poised coming out of driveways, on cell phones, or radios blasting, their heads transfixed in one direction (I was coming in the opposite direction) to get them to “LOOK BOTH WAYS”.
I felt no compunction in letting the New York shout out from me, although I probably earned my local moniker “Crazy Man”.
I think we should raise the minimum driving age AND also start road testing those 65 and up. I am happy for those who are 75, 80, etc., who can still drive.
My father is 89 and still drives and SHOULDN’T. I won’t ride with him. It’s going to be different for everyone, hence… testing.
@12
This may surprise you, but driving a car is much, much, much more likely to lead to death or serious injury than taking mass transit.
Also — how much money are you willing to sacrifice for the precious little freedom you described?
Apparently, in Charles’ world, only middle-aged people drive, and they never cause accidents.
Sad story. I have one, too. Cecil Pierce, a senior living in a small town in Maine, reached the age of 95 and got a ticket. MEDOL took his license away when he had problems answering questions on the written exam. He couldn’t drive so he blew his head off with his shotgun a few days later. There is no public transportation where he lived. There is here. If you get too old to drive, “take the bus and leave the driving to us.”
@15 What you say may be true – maybe old drivers are very dangerous, but drive very little. But, for me, what matters is the absolute number killed. Again from the census numbers, in 2007 there were 43 100 people killed in motor vehicle accidents. People under 24 were responsible for about 10 387 of those deaths, while people over 75 were responsible for 3189 deaths. So, young drivers seem to be the larger problem.
@23 The point is that you want to take into account the number of drivers of a given age bracket AND the number of miles they average per accident (because even non-fatal accidents are something we really want to minimize if possible).
Charles, want to race (asshole)?
Paul Newman – At the age of 70 years and 8 days, he became the oldest driver to be part of a winning team in a major sanctioned race, winning in his class at the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona. Among his last races were the Baja 1000 in 2004 and the 24 Hours of Daytona once again in 2005. – Wikipedia
Maybe if the oldsters knew they had to start passing drivers tests and faced the real possibility of loosing their licenses, they just might start to vote for all those transit proposals. Probably not though, we Americans aren’t a very forward looking lot.
While we are at it, maybe it’s time to license bloggers and… ah… journalists. For example, proposing clawing back rights from entire classes of people without bothering to look at much less reference the copious science that renders the proposal absurd- that would be five points.
The solution is to test ALL drivers on a regular schedule. I used to be a bridge engineer, and we would test every bridge in our district every ten years. The bridges could pass, in which case they’d be tested again in 10 years, or they could fail, in which case they’d be closed. But there was also a ‘warning’ option, where the bridge would need to be retested in 6 months to 2 years (depending on how close to failing they got).
It seems that we could/should do the same for driving. People would take the test at 16 when they first got their license, then again at 20 and every ten years afterwards. They could pass the test – and be authorized to drive for another 10 years; or they could fail the test – and lose their license immediately; or they could be given a warning and get to keep their license for 6 months before being tested again.
But this does have costs – there would need to be many more testers and more testing facilities, and those aren’t cheap. Still it would require that people stay familiar with basic traffic safety rules throughout their lives and would get impared drivers – young *and* old – off the streets.
As for what alternate transportation they would use – mass transit would also have to be beefed up. I know in our area there is a transport specifically for the elderly which picks them up at their door and delivers them to where they are going – but they give the rider a 2 hour window in which they will arrive, so the rider has to potentially wait 2 hours before and after a doctor’s appointment to get their ride. It is inconvenient, but not impossible.
And to answer tiktok @ 11: I may soon be losing *my* driver’s license. Even though I am not old, I may be impared (I’m undergoing testing to see who impared I am and treatment to see if the imparement will improve). If I am found to be impared I would willingly give up my license rather than risk hurting some innocent person.
No old person is gonna take the bus or train to get where they want. The market for personal transportation services for the elderly is gonna explode in the next 20 years.
Schhwighsr/29: The solution is to test ALL drivers on a regular schedule.
I could support that. In the Puget Sound area, considering the way they drive, about 25% of drivers would probably fail. It would mean fewer incompetent drivers on the road and less congestion for those of us who know how to drive.
No different? Problems on both ends, yes, but entirely different situations, so your little summation is incorrect. As an illustration:
“The reason we should not publish the writing of three-year-olds is no different from the reason we should not publish the writing of Charles Mudede.”
Pretty ageist to assume that the crash was because she’s old. I got rear ended by a woman in her 30s a couple weeks ago at a red light. It would be pretty ridiculous of me to assume it was because she is a female, or Latino, or that she’s naturally irresponsible because she didn’t have insurance. What it probably was was a mistake.
The reason we should “ban” old people from driving is that they can’t be held legally responsible for their actions? Really?
When the cops call you at 2am to tell you that your Mother is standing out in front of the county courthouse . . .she’s wondering why the pastor hasn’t opened the church, I’d think a person might check why the woman was on the road in the first place & report it to DMV.
My Mother is 91 & drove until she was 87. She drove around for 3 years with undiagnosed Alzheimers & could have killed someone or herself.
For 3 years I begged the DMV to test her. . .they wouldn’t. . .”testing for seniors is voluntary” or “confidentiality”. As long as she passed the eye test she was free to drive (yes, even with HIPPA release and POA documents).
For 3 years I begged doctors to tell her she shouldn’t drive & at least send send the DMV a flag.
Only with the Alzheimers diagnosis were we able to pull her driving privledge, then only because the doctor said “You cannot drive” . & her husband begrudgingly agreed to the discomfort of not driving her to church once a week.
Today . . .the State DMV couldn’t care less. Her license is still valid because she passed the eye test . . .After this diatribe, I want a shower.
I’m sorry for the annonimist pout.
yep. pout.
9 – you’re wrong. The problem is drivers, bad drivers.
RKW nailed it, and he’s in the age class pertinent to this discussion. Driver’s tests at specified age limits won’t harm anyone, and will save lives.
You can have your car culture discussion elsewhere.